"remarkable...scintillatingly sophisticated"

July 30, 2004 performance reviewed by Pat Nichols

At Williamstown Theatre Festival, Design for Living, Noel Coward’s 1930s-era play about the mores of sexual liaisons opens on a remarkable recreation of a Paris studio apartment. A large paneled window to the left evokes images of a Paris that still exists as well as the Bohemian Paris of artists, writers, and musicians.

The plot is simple - people make friends in their youth that remain important all through life. Sexual connections endure and grow stronger and more important, and grow even more acceptable.

The sets are outstanding, the dialogue scintillatingly sophisticated.

The play is very long and the three intermissions, essential to change the very impressive sets, add to the length. It is based on a ménage a trois between Otto, Leo, and Gilda that began in their youth, which never truly disappears but resurfaces when all come together.

In Act 1, Gilda, in a yellow robe, knows what she doesn’t want a life of marriage and children, but she’s confused about what she does want and how to realize it.

Otto, a painter just returning from Europe, has excited Gilda, her friend Leo and even art dealer Ernest, all friends who congregate in the apartment.

The play revolves around the relationship between Otto, Leo, and Gilda and what happens to them over time.

Very verbal, excitable and energetic, at times verging on a manic precipice, Gilda vents her emotions and her ideas as she moves about the studio awaiting the arrival of good friend Otto. When Otto arrives he finds Leo came early to spend the night with Gilda. All engage in a yelling match.

The second act opens on a very British flat in London, an opposite of the Paris studio. Instead of castoff furniture fixed up in colors, the London flat indicates a new successful era for Leo who lives in the upscale flat with Gilda as they enjoy the success and good reviews of his latest play, and it’s fine furniture.

Mrs. Hodge, the maid, passes through as she goes about her routine. Kristine Nielsen frumps her way in and out with her cleaning tools or food trays, lightening up the atmosphere and drawing much appreciation and laughter from the audience.

A now successful artist, well dressed Otto appears and reconnects with Gilda — and later with Leo in a funny, drunken commiseration.

The third set, a modernistic apartment in NYC, serves as a backdrop to what has happened to the threesome as time passed by.

Gilda is now married to old friend Ernest the art dealer and has become a successful decorator.

Costumes by Candice Donnely adroitly add to the passage of time, Gilda’s robes and gowns go from the plain yellow to a velvet robe in London to a very simple sophisticated, fluid white gown in the New York apartment. Otto and Leo show up in tails and top hats, so 1930s, unexpectedly (at least to Ernest).

Director Gregory Boyd keeps the dilemma of who to love and the problems of loving in triplicate in hand even as the dialogue whizzes by.

Hugh Landwher’s sets evoke the atmosphere of Paris, London, and America and the contrasts among the three.

The play, though long, moves on and the love between the two men and Gilda fits in with the often madcap notion of the play. In today’s era of sexual acceptance it hardly raises a question.