Consumed by love of the flash-fire sort

Noel Coward was a chemist of interpersonal relationships, which he recorded in equations that go something like this: “If all the various cosmic thingummys fuse at the same moment, and the right spark is struck, there’s no knowing what one mightn’t do. That was the trouble with Elyot and me, we were like two violent acids bubbling about in a nasty little matrimonial bottle.” The speaker is Amanda, a central character in Coward’s most enduringly popular play, “Private Lives.” The Elyot to whom she refers is her former spouse. She’s about to bump into him again, and when she does, their passion will explode anew.

At Pasadena Playhouse, director Art Manke and his actors prove admirably proficient in this volatile science, getting the chemicals to react with such heat that the first few rows of the audience seem almost in danger of being singed.

Manke states in a program note that he tried to approach the 75-year-old comedy not as a revival but as a world premiere, in hopes of recapturing the qualities that, in 1930, made it so “shocking, thrilling, highly sexual and utterly delightful.”

The results of this approach are evident as soon as Blake Lindsley’s Amanda and Andrew Borba’s Elyot are reunited. Divorced five years, the characters -- English sophisticates -- encounter each other on connecting balconies of the French coastal hotel where each is honeymooning with a new spouse. Upon recovering from the initial shock, they find attraction’s raw power reasserting itself.

Memories of harsh words and fisticuffs fly from their minds as Elyot stands, trembling, behind Amanda. Impulsively, he seizes her. She gasps. Extravagantly. Ecstatically. And oh-so-sensually.

The outrageous happenstance of their reunion gives “Private Lives” one of theater history’s most amusing setups. It also underscores another of Coward’s themes. “Everything that happens is chance,” Amanda casually opines to her new husband, shortly before happening upon the old one.

Tom Buderwitz’s set slyly echoes this thought by planting a seaside Ferris wheel -- looking, for all the world, like a roulette wheel -- in the distance beyond the balconies. He also provides a portentously cloud-clumped sky, enclosed in a huge picture frame.

The frame emphasizes the frank theatricality of Coward’s characters. As they toss off witty observations and fling themselves headlong into every drama that presents itself, they seem always to be performing, for themselves and for one another.

The Pasadena cast has a high time with this.

Lindsley bites melodramatically into Amanda’s words, every husky syllable dripping with sex appeal. Her porcelain face flashes expressively, and her willowy body is the perfect dressmaker’s form for Mary Vogt’s vividly colored, daringly cut gowns. Similarly sleek, Borba’s compact, flinty Elyot speaks with a perpetual sneer -- so bored with the world that he’s always trying to stir things up.

Their new mates are exact opposites. Brian McGovern’s strapping, square-jawed Victor seems solid and dependable. Monette Magrath’s Sibyl -- with her short, blond, wavy hair and pert dresses -- is the very picture of demure femininity. Yet these characters possess turbulent depths as well (as does Jenna Cole’s tippling maid, who spits French expletives as though firing bullets).

Passion brings out the best as well as the worst in each person. Elyot is said to have struck Amanda in the past, and their rapturous reunion -- enacted in a veritable Kama Sutra of sensual poses -- is interrupted by a furiously physical fight. Their behavior is shocking, inexcusable, but also complexly and undeniably human.

“This is sheer raving madness,” Amanda says as she and Elyot contemplate ditching their new spouses and running off together. “Something’s happened to us, we’re not sane.” To which Elyot, perceptive and witty as ever, replies: “We never were.”

*

‘Private Lives’

Where: Pasadena Playhouse, 39 S. El Molino Ave., Pasadena

When: 8 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays, 5 and 9 p.m. Saturdays, 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays

Ends: June 5

Price: $37 to $53

Contact: (626) 356-PLAY or www.PasadenaPlayhouse.org

Running Time: 2 hours, 15 minutes

Blake Lindsley...Amanda

Andrew Borba...Elyot

Monette Magrath...Sibyl

Brian McGovern...Victor

Jenna Cole...Louise

Written by Noel Coward. Directed by Art Manke. Set Tom Buderwitz. Lights Peter Maradudin. Costumes Mary Vogt. Sound Steven Cahill. Production stage manager Conwell Sellars Worthington III.