Modern Reflections on a Century-Old Classic

I was totally thrilled to win the RTST Sir Peter Hall Director Award last year, more than anything because this award comes with an actual production. I’m a long way into my career, but as a freelance director based outside London, it’s been hard to get my work seen by producers, and I’ve struggled to get the backing to step up to a bigger scale. This award really helps theatres take a bet on a director they’ve never worked with before. So whilst the trophy is nice (an actual trophy!), for me, it’s getting a show to audiences that really counts. 

'This award really helps theatres take a bet on a director they’ve never worked with before.'

I make theatre because I believe stories can transform how we understand people, and reveal the world and its possibilities in surprising ways. Even a century-old classic like Noël Coward’s Private Lives, can offer unexpected perspectives on our modern world. I’d never read the play before Lotte Wakeham (Artistic Director of Bolton Octagon) sent it to me in December as a suggestion for this production, and I was so surprised when I first read it. I couldn’t believe how modern these characters felt. Coward wrote it in 1930 but these characters just jumped off the page into my world and felt so recognisable – their contradictions, desires, needs, insecurities, are the same anxieties we still feel today about relationships and how they allow or don’t allow us to be free and move forward in our lives. 

'I make theatre because I believe
stories can transform how we
understand people, and reveal the world and its possibilities in surprising ways.'

There are some weird preconceptions about the “proper” way to do a Noël Coward play: that it has to be very stiff and clipped and white. But that’s not at all how Private Lives felt to me when I read it. It’s really volatile and passionate, and it resonated for me in a way I never expected it to – and that’s the energy I want to bring to this production. We’ll keep the story set in the 1930s, but we’ve also got a fabulous multi-racial cast, we won’t be using heightened RP, and we can acknowledge the queerness that’s written into the play in terms of how these people perform into or against gender conventions. The play is funny, sexy, shocking; and I hope our production will combine the glamour and screwball comedy thrill of the 1930s with a vibrant, modern energy that speaks directly to our audiences in 2025. Hope you can join us.

By Tanuja Amarasuriya

Photo by Chris Payne

First published in October 2025