A design for life
Design For Living
The Old Fire Station Theatre until Saturday 12th November
Production: 4/5
Cast: 4/5
Direction: 4/5
When people speak of love triangles they generally don’t mean it. Two guys love the same girl, or someone’s husband has a mistress, or someone’s wife has a toyboy. In Noel Coward’s Design For Living there is a genuine triangle. When in doubt, any two characters are probably in love, or at least have carefully left their relationship ambivalent. The main three are Gilda (Charlie Covell), Otto (Nicholas Bishop) and Leo (Jack Farthing).
This production reunites Covell and Bishop, with director Sarah Branthwaite, from Oleanna, one of the best plays on the Oxford stage last term. Design For Living never quite matches this success, but it is not the fault of any of Oleanna’s cast and crew.
Charlie Cavell is easily the strongest part of the ensemble • as she discusses her artistic opinions with Ernest (Neil Gatland), marriage to Otto, affair with Leo, she does each with understated naturalism that leaves the audience gasping in admiration. Only occasionally • as when Ernest’s line “no need to shout” requires an unprecedented and unwonted climax in Cavell’s tone • does one suspect that Coward wrote Gilda as a slightly different character than that which we see.
Whether or not, Cavell’s version is almost wholly fl awless. It is perhaps by comparison that Jack Farthing’s Leo initially appears very amateurish. The two actors, in a scene of heightened emotion, seem incompatible: Cavell remains subtle and restrained, whilst Farthing parades his over-enunciated consonants through a stage-school caricature of anxiety.
Thankfully he improves: once Otto makes his return, discovering his wife and best friend in the wake of their affair, Leo can swiftly move into the realm of comedic frivolity. It is an area in which both Farthing and Coward are more comfortable; Nicholas Bishop, as Otto, appears equally capable at angst and affectation, but Coward’s dialogue is more polished and enjoyable at the opening of the second scene.
Gilda and Leo are living together in London, reading the reviews of Leo’s latest play. The self-defence is palpable: “They say the play is thin” / “Oh, they’ve noticed!” and “amiable but non-committal” leave the discerning reviewer with little to contribute. Including the criticism within the play is like hiding bicarbonate-ofsoda in a chocolate cake: one may complain, but one is forestalled.
When Otto returns, the scene becomes a mirror of the fi rst: the triangle is apparently symmetrical. Isosceles, if you will. The tussle between the three continues throughout the play, to the varied chagrin and amusement of each protagonist. Design For Living is Coward at his most funny • he treats the characters as vehicles for one-liners on occasion, but the laughter is still genuine.
Branthwaite directs her varied cast with agility; creating movements unobtrusive enough to give the words centrestage is a tricky task but one managed excellently. Coward’s play was shocking in 1932.
The seventy year interim hasn’t made the dubious morality portrayed any more acceptable, but the audience has altered: instead of young revolutionaries nodding in earnest approval, or shocked majors in dinner jackets, the scarf-wearing English students who come to see the production are most likely to slip into careless relativism, ignore moral issues and chuckle at the witty dialogue. Coward is probably laughing right back at them.
10th Nov 2005