NOEL COWARD’S wickedly witty comedy Private Lives will be presented by Keighley Playhouse from Monday to Saturday, January 16 to 21.

Passion, laughter, romance, anger and love are promised on the Devonshire Street stage during the sophisticated battle of the sexes.

A divorced couple find themselves unwittingly thrown together every evening from 7.30pm in the classic comedy of manners.

Private Lives deals with the conventions and social rituals by which a person presents their passions and motivations that lie beneath the veneer of etiquette and respectability.

A Playhouse spokesman said: “Pouring with champagne-fuelled wit and sparkling dialogue, you get the sense something childish is about to bubble over – and that’s just the intimate side.

“This plot-perfect marital comedy is a wickedly vicious theatrical favourite that simmers on a summer’s evening charged with frivolousness and charm."

The play’s director Robin Martin said it was evident from the beginning of the play that Coward’s characters could not live with each other, yet on the other hand they could not live without each other.

He said: “When the jilted spouses finally acknowledge just who is really suited to whom, the vitriolic cycle begins again.”

Private Lives provides all the structure Coward needs to display his eccentric wit and deft comedic stagecraft, which are considered the main strengths of many of his plays.

The protagonists lampoon the hypocrisies and pretensions of modern manners and social conventions and seek true love regardless of the cost to their reputations.

Once they free themselves from the ‘outside world’, their inner passions and jealousies - their ‘private lives’ - consume them, leaving them trapped in an inescapable cycle of love and hate.

Robin added: “They’re the couple that cause you to remark, ‘I think the two of them make a wonderful couple’. Then one day, you hear they’ve divorced. And you’re not surprised.

“From the moment the curtain opens, the play begins to fizz on stage. Every line is sharp and served with a lot of froth with no sign of going flat. Private Lives is fast-paced, witty and passionate - a delightful sophisticated comedy romp!”

Call 07599 890769 to book tickets.

Keighley Playhouse will present West End hit One Man, Two Guvnors from March 6 to 11, directed by Kevin Moore.

In the British seaside town of Brighton, Francis Henshall has just been fired from his skiffle band. Despondent and desperate for fish and chips, Henshall ends up in the employ of Roscoe Crabbe, a small-time hood from the East End of London.

But it turns out that “Roscoe” is really his twin sister Rachel in disguise, because Roscoe was murdered by Rachel’s boyfriend Stanley Stubbers. As fate would have it, Stanley is also hiding out in Brighton and waiting to be reunited with Rachel, and employs Henshall, as well.

In order to keep both his jobs Henshall, who is also working on a romance of his own, must keep his two guvnors from discovering each other.

Coming up: drama Ladies In Lavender (April 24-29) and Mike Harding comedy Fur Coat And No Knickers (June 12-17).