Private Lives
Vaudeville, until 1 May
Party
Arts, until 13 March
This isn’t right. This can’t be happening. She’s over 50. Quite a bit over. In fact, she’s 53 and she’s playing the 29-year-old heroine in one of the finest comedies in the repertoire. And she’s doing it in London. And she isn’t even English. What possessed Kim Cattrall to imagine she could play Amanda in Private Lives? The answer turns out to be, supreme self-possession. From her first entrance, her starry grace communicates itself to the entire auditorium. The age question resolves itself straight away. She appears half-naked in a bathrobe. Her soft bare arms are plump and tanned and show none of the sinewed graininess of the gym or the bench press. One can’t tell whether surgical grooms have attended to her pelt but she seems as sleek and spry as the twentysomething she’s playing.
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