It’s 1930, at a seaside resort in France. The men wear dinner jackets, not t-shirts, and the cocktails and cigarettes are everywhere. Those cocktails come in handy when a former husband and wife, still frosty after a divorce, meet unexpectedly. They’re each honeymooning with a new spouse, and this unplanned encounter is awkward, to say the least.

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But soon a thaw begins.

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They start discussing their new spouses.

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Noel Coward was famous for witty, precise dialog. But Coward also knew a lot about the wayward human heart. In this story, two people rush into an ill-considered reunion that will inevitably explode. This makes for spectacular verbal battles that careen into physical comedy, including a wild cake-in-the-face food fight. “Private Lives” is a show that gets you laughing while suggesting that matrimony, however tempting, is pure folly.