Private Lives was a runaway hit when it debuted in 1930, and the play has remained popular in revivals ever since. In the initial production, Coward himself starred as Elyot opposite Gertrude Lawrence's Amanda. The play was produced at London's Phoenix Theatre, opening in September, 1930, after preview runs in Edinburgh, Birmingham, Manchester, and Southsea. The Daily Mail reported that tickets to the three-month engagement were in great demand, "though the piece is meant neither to instruct, to improve, nor to uplift." In the New York Times, drama critic Charles Morgan called the play "a remarkable tour de force," despite a story that was "almost impudently insubstantial___The speed, the impudence, the frothiness of [Coward's] dialogue are his salvation, and his performance is brilliant." After its New York debut, at the Times Square Theater m January of 1931, J. Brooks Atkinson of the New York Times found the essence...