The Fun of Being Old Friends Playing Embattled Lovers
May 30, 2002
By Jesse McKinley – The New York Times
On a misty, decidedly English Sunday morning, Alan Rickman and Lindsay Duncan are sitting at a Manhattan theater district restaurant, looking anything but the high-toned sophisticates they play in the Broadway revival of Noël Coward’s ”Private Lives”.
Mr. Rickman, he of the heavy-lidded eyes and sinisterly soft voice, is moving even more slowly than usual, looking to a continuous flow of coffee to lift his morning fog. The usually luminous Ms. Duncan, meanwhile, looks only slightly more bright-eyed than her co-star. She also confesses that she must soon go to the theater for two hours of prep work on her wild mane before the 3 o’clock matinee.
”Alan did it on ‘Liaisons’”, she says. ”So it’s my turn.”
”Liaisons” is ”Les Liaisons Dangereuses”, the 1987 Broadway smash about a pair of fiendish aristocrats — played by Mr. Rickman and Ms. Duncan — who treat sex as a parlor game. In that production it was Mr. Rickman, as the Vicomte de Valmont, a seductive fop, who had to sit to have his hair prepared French-court style.
What sort of preparation does he have to do this time around?
”Minimal,” he says with a smile.
Both Mr. Rickman and Ms. Duncan describe their approach to Elyot and Amanda, the battling lovers at the heart of ”Private Lives,” as beguilingly simple.
”We don’t muss about,” Mr. Rickman says.
Ms. Duncan agrees. ”We go in and start acting,” she says. ”And if they can’t see us, we move into the light. And if we embarrass ourselves terribly, we stop and try not to embarrass ourselves.”
Not that they need to worry. The revival of ”Private Lives,” which opened last month on Broadway, has been greeted by some of the most unanimously positive reviews of the season. Ben Brantley called the production ”scintillating” in The New York Times, adding that the ”erotic bloom is restored to one of the funniest comedies of the 20th century.” Critics in London, where the production played all winter before transferring to New York, reacted much the same way.
Both Mr. Rickman and Ms. Duncan have been nominated for Tony Awards, which will be announced on Sunday. ”Private Lives” earned a total of six nominations, including one for its director, Howard Davies.
Though the two actors are close friends, ”Liaisons” was the last time they worked together, except for a 1997* London production of ”Troilus and Cressida,” in which their characters rarely shared the stage.
In 1997 Mr. Rickman also directed and helped write the film version of Sharman MacDonald’s play ”The Winter Guest.” Mr. Rickman says his interest in the work, which tells the story of a mother and her daughter, was piqued by conversations with Ms. Duncan about her relationship with her mother. The film is dedicated to Ms. Duncan’s mother, Helen.
Mr. Rickman and Ms. Duncan say the decision to do ”Private Lives” was made over a cup of tea.
”It’s quite a small community of actors in London,” Mr. Rickman says, ”plus you make certain decisions that bind you together.”
What he and Ms. Duncan share, he says, is a passion for new plays and the theaters that do them, including companies like the Royal Court, the Bush and the Hampstead Theater.
So why do a revival of ”Private Lives,” which was written in 1930?
”I had only seen the play once, I think, and Howard had never seen it,” Ms. Duncan says, referring to Mr. Davies, ”so I think we all approached it as a new play. We also thought there was about a 90 percent chance of us enjoying it.”
Still, even before the production began, both actors had specific concerns, including the right-size theater (read: small). In London that meant the Albery, a relatively intimate stage off Leicester Square. In New York, however, ”Private Lives” is at the 1,349-seat Richard Rodgers, which presents its own challenges. ”I feel like I have to use a megaphone occasionally,” Mr. Rickman says.
The production came together remarkably quickly. The total rehearsal time in London was just over three weeks. What helped make it possible, Mr. Rickman and Ms. Duncan both say, was the familiarity that grew out of working together on ”Les Liaisons Dangereuses.” (That show ran for more than four months on Broadway after a lengthy run in England.)
Rehearsals for the London production of ”Private Lives” began in late August. But the events of Sept. 11 caused collective doubt about the project’s importance, Mr. Rickman says. ”We couldn’t have felt more stupid: ‘Oh, here we are doing Noël Coward,’ ” he says. ”But I think we realized that people actually have a human need to laugh, even at times like that.”
Neither the actors nor the director felt ready when the play began performances on Sept. 21. Right until the curtain, Ms. Duncan says, the actors were ”stealing little bits of time to work out a dance or a fight.”
”I’ve never seen Howard so frightened as at the premiere,” she says. ”It was like he was pushing his children off a cliff.”
It was a soft landing. Raves followed the Oct. 4 opening. Plans were soon afoot to bring Mr. Rickman and Ms. Duncan back to Broadway for the first time in 15 years.
Since arriving, both actors have been impressed by how audiences have taken to their ”new play.”
”It’s so strange: people ask if we’ve rewritten the script,” Ms. Duncan says. ”It almost makes you wonder what’s been going on with it before.”
*They did Troilus and Cressida in 1985.
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Les Liaisons Dangereuses 1985, 1987
