Theater

“Private Lives”: Passion brings out the best and the worst in the English sophisticates populating Noel Coward’s comedy classic. Director Art Manke turns the heat to high, and the performers have a great time playing characters who are at once aloof and primal. Manke states in a program note that he tried to approach the 75-year-old comedy not as a revival but as a world premiere, in hopes of recapturing the qualities that, in 1930, made it

so “shocking, thrilling, highly sexual and utterly delightful.” The results of this approach are evident as soon as Blake Lindsley’s Amanda and Andrew Borba’s Elyot are reunited.

*

Ends Sunday at the Pasadena Playhouse, 39 S. El Molino Ave., Pasadena. (626) 356-7529.

-- Daryl H. Miller