DESIGN FOR LIVING till 23 August
Oxford/Tour
DESIGN FOR LIVING
by Noel Coward
The Peter Hall Company at Oxford Playhouse in rep to 23 August 2003 then tour
7.30pm 13,14,18,20,23 August
8pm 15,22 August
Mat 2,30pm 16,21 August
Runs 2hr 40min Two intervals
TICKETS 01865 305305
www.oxfordplayhouse.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 11 August
Elegant, clear but with unequal central performances.
One of Coward's last plays A Song at Twilight shows a famous, elderly playwright haunted by the discovery of a past same-sex love affair. It was felt Coward was writing about the safely dead Somerset Maugham. Yet, thirty years before, Design For Living had shown the love between Otto and Leo, successful playwright and painter, being as real an element of a triangular relationship as the love both have for interior designer Gilda.
True, the men's relationship unfolds through a drinking scene, to which Peter Hall's production adds their brief kisses. But the design for living that takes these three from Paris via London to New York is selfishly exclusive. And to work, the performances need to engage our sympathy.
It's hard to see how Hugo Speer's flat, raw Otto could do that. And the easy confidence of Aden Gillett's Leo soon loses its magnetism. Both tend to the obvious solution to a line; and the production's low-point comes in their misery at the end of the first, Paris act self-indulgent complaint acted with a roughness that would barely convince in weekly seaside rep.
Fortunately, Janie Dee's Gilda gives a strong sense of what these roles require. An entirely natural-seeming confidence, where the thoughts come effortlessly her lie to a 'phone-caller about going to Paris in order to give Leo a clear field at a house-party where he can promote his success is a model of realistic acting. The thought behind emerges and isn't self-consciously 'acted'.
Hall's production does make clear how one character's sudden success reacts on the others. And the remaining characters are beautifully played. Ann Penfold has a fine cameo-double, her slyly aware New York socialite following a moronically flustered housekeeper arguably the only character who does a useful job is held up for patronising laughter by 20th century-theatre's self-conscious master of style.
William Chubb as the art-dealer who marries Gilda till her friends return gains our sympathy. He shouldn't. We should feel the final image of the threesome together is natural. Here we more likely wonder how Gilda could associate with two over-grown, loutishly-inclined schoolboys.
Gilda: Janie Dee
Ernest: William Chubb
Otto: Hugo Speer
Leo: Aden Gillett
Miss Hodge/Grace Torrence: Ann Penfold
Mr Birbeck: Col Farrell
Photographer/Matthew: Benjamin Joiner
Henry Carver: David Jansen
Helen Carver: Pandora Colin
Director: Peter Hall
Designer: John Gunter
Lighting: Peter Mumford
Sound: Gregory Clarke
Associate director: Thea Sharrock
2003-08-13 09:48:30