In this review of the original Broadway production—which starred playwright Coward in the lead role ofElyot—Atkinson gives a favorable appraisal of the play's comedic offerings.

Noel Coward's talent for httle things remains unimpaired. In Private Lives, in which he appeared at the Times Square last evening, he has nothing to say, and manages to say it with competent agility for three acts. Sometimes the nothingness of this comedy begins to show through the dialogue. Particularly in the long second act, which is as thin as a patent partition, Mr Coward's talent for little things threatens to run dry. But when the tone comes to drop the second act curtain his old facility for theatrical climax comes bubbling out of the tap again. There is a sudden brawl. Mr. Coward, in person, and Gertrude Lawrence, likewise in person, start tumbling over the furniture and...