Dining Chicago

Robert Sella and Tracy Michelle Arnold as tumultuous divorcés in Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s “Private Lives.” (Photo by Liz Lauren.)

Every time I attend a show at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, I wonder, all over again, who had the bright idea of putting a theater on Navy Pier? To be sure, the theater complex has gorgeous views of Lake Michigan, but who cares about the views outside a theater? It’s slow and awkward to get onto the Pier, especially when other events are taking place, and slower still to get off again when the show’s over; parking is expensive; all the Pier dining options, from the food court on up, are priced at pay-for-the-view rates; and despite whatever sponsorship they get based on their high-profile location, the theater is still forced to charge a whopping $75 for tickets on Saturday nights.

All that means I don’t recommend CST shows lightly. So trust me when I say, go see “Private Lives.”

One of Noël Coward’s wittiest plays, this is among the best comedies of the 1930s, an era that produced some terrific theater, and CST’s done an exquisite job of it.

Produced in three acts with two intermissions, just as it would have been in the 1930s, this delectable play opens on Elyot and Sybil Chase, who’ve just arrived at their honeymoon hotel. He’s urbane and a trifle aloof; she’s younger, giddier and, to his chagrin, fixated on his first wife, from whom he was divorced five years before. He tells her he’s now looking for a quieter, cozy love life.

Next, we meet Amanda and Victor Prynne, also honeymooning; languid, elegant, self-aware and dazzlingly costumed, she’s taken aback when her new husband declares her to be “normal.” Bluff, hearty Victor wants to make her forget all about her unfortunate first marriage … which he does by constant reference to it. She says few people are completely normal, and compares her relationship with her first husband to “violent acids.”

Then Elyot and Amanda rediscover each other.

Robert Sella and Tracy Michelle Arnold portray the reuniting ex-spouses with a brilliantly comic sophistication that carries over even when they’re throwing things at each other. Their timing and delivery of Coward’s intoxicating lines is perfect throughout. If the supposedly “chemical” passion between the pair sometimes seems less than sizzling on stage, well, the characters’ aloofness and self-absorption infects every part of their lives.

As the abandoned new mates, Chaon Cross, all simpering sweetness, and Tim Campbell, stolid masculinity, make wonderful foils for the worldliness of Arnold and Sella.

Director Gary Griffin sets the play in the round, highlighting the circular relationships of Coward’s script, and paces the action ideally. Quite unnecessarily, however, he’s also staged it on a gimmicky rotating turntable that adds nothing to the play beyond intimate views of Scenic Designer Neil Patel’s fine period furnishings in the second act, and the fine detail work of the set dressers. The set revolves under a huge, cartoonish moon that also seems like overkill.

Coward’s delicious script and the cast’s potent acting overcome all distracting elements, however. This is theater as it should be done.

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If “Private Lives” whets your appetite for Coward, check out Writers’ Theatre’s production of “Oh Coward,” a revue of Coward’s music.