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Design for Living
'The actual facts are so simple. I love you. You love me. You love Otto. I love Otto. Otto loves you. Otto loves me. There now! Start to unravel from there.'
Design for Living is a wickedly witty dark romantic comedy by Noel Coward. Initially banned in the UK, this provocative play portrays three amoral, glib and stylish characters and their hopelessly inescapable, if also unconventional, emotional entanglement.
From 1930s bohemian Paris to the dizzying heights of Manhattan society, a tempestuous love triangle unravels between a vivacious interior designer, Gilda, playwright Leo and artist Otto - three people unashamedly and passionately in love with each other. They are trapped in what Coward called 'a three-sided erotic hodge podge.'
With Coward's trademark piquant style, this lively, funny but also atypical play looks at dazzling, egotistical creatures and their self-destructive dependence on each other. Exploring themes of bisexuality, celebrity, success and self-obsession, Design for Living is a stylish and scandalous comedy.
Design for Living is a wickedly witty dark romantic comedy by Noel Coward. Initially banned in the UK, this provocative play portrays three amoral, glib and stylish characters and their hopelessly inescapable, if also unconventional, emotional entanglement.
From 1930s bohemian Paris to the dizzying heights of Manhattan society, a tempestuous love triangle unravels between a vivacious interior designer, Gilda, playwright Leo and artist Otto - three people unashamedly and passionately in love with each other. They are trapped in what Coward called 'a three-sided erotic hodge podge.'
With Coward's trademark piquant style, this lively, funny but also atypical play looks at dazzling, egotistical creatures and their self-destructive dependence on each other. Exploring themes of bisexuality, celebrity, success and self-obsession, Design for Living is a stylish and scandalous comedy.
152 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1932
About the author
Noël Coward
349 books203 followersSir Noël Peirce Coward was an English actor, playwright, and composer of popular music. Among his achievements, he received an Academy Certificate of Merit at the 1943 Academy Awards for "outstanding production achievement for In Which We Serve."
Known for his wit, flamboyance, and personal style, his plays and songs achieved new popularity in the 1960s and 1970s, and his work and style continue to influence popular culture. The former Albery Theatre (originally the New Theatre) in London was renamed the Noël Coward Theatre in his honour in 2006.
Known for his wit, flamboyance, and personal style, his plays and songs achieved new popularity in the 1960s and 1970s, and his work and style continue to influence popular culture. The former Albery Theatre (originally the New Theatre) in London was renamed the Noël Coward Theatre in his honour in 2006.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 46 reviews
June 15, 2015
A famous title resulting not from the play but from the wonderful Lubitsch movie (sc Ben Hecht, who used 2 lines by Coward), it's a provocative work, though not particularly funny. At times, it's even nasty and worse, for Coward, boring. Still, writ for himself and the Lunts, and first performed in 1933, give Coward credit for tackling bisexuality-plus, which ev'one either let pass or chose blinkeredness. Today, it's seldom performed (with good reason: it needs serious cuts and demands glam actors).
Director Anthony Page said, a few years ago, it was about a woman gaining independence. (Bosh) Then, while appearing in a revivial, Vanessa Redgrave belched, "It's about the class struggle." That's when I decided she was working for MI5, but never mind... Gilda & Leo & Otto are all in love w each other and "doing it." Noel got away with it onstage; the sex - central to play - is offstage. His situ is modern, but the long second act requires a few Hail Marys. Or Bloody Marys.
The play ends with the threesome laughing uproariously. Why?? Today, knowing what we do about Noel and the Lunts, I submit that the laughter is all about their personal and successful facades. Art imitates Life.
Director Anthony Page said, a few years ago, it was about a woman gaining independence. (Bosh) Then, while appearing in a revivial, Vanessa Redgrave belched, "It's about the class struggle." That's when I decided she was working for MI5, but never mind... Gilda & Leo & Otto are all in love w each other and "doing it." Noel got away with it onstage; the sex - central to play - is offstage. His situ is modern, but the long second act requires a few Hail Marys. Or Bloody Marys.
The play ends with the threesome laughing uproariously. Why?? Today, knowing what we do about Noel and the Lunts, I submit that the laughter is all about their personal and successful facades. Art imitates Life.
May 8, 2016
Amorality, the menage a trois, bisexuality, and carpe diem win out in a fit of defiant demonic laughter in Noel Coward's 1933 three-act theatrical comedy Design for Living.
I was prompted to read this play script after having read Sheridan Morley's final biography of Noel Coward and also because the hilarious 1933 screen adaptation by Ernst Lubitsch and Ben Hecht is one of my all-time favorite movies. (I'd wondered for many years why it was so obscure but with its release in recent years on Criterion DVD and Blu-ray the movie has found a wider audience).
It's quite instructive to read this just to see how far afield a movie version can go from the original stage source. Coward himself apparently never saw the film, and he probably didn't want to. He once remarked that the film only kept two lines of dialogue from his original play. Although slightly more than that did make the transition from stage to screen, the two animals are very different, but each great in its own way. The problem for screenwriter Ben Hecht was that the play was far too "dirty" to be acceptable movie fare to the censors and American audiences of 1933, but he got around the problem beautifully by writing what amounted to an equally clever proto-screwball comedy. The rebellious attitudes of the three main characters and their jabs at the stuffy social order and its conventional morality made the transition well from stage to screen.
Design for Living takes place first in Paris and then in London, during which time the play's free-spirited artists' muse, Gilda, becomes increasingly more stiflingly conventional.
Gilda is the inspiration of two men who adore her: Leo, a struggling playwright who is finally finding success, and Otto, a painter who has yet to achieve recognition. In the film version, Gilda's role as the mother hen to these two artistes is clearly stated right from the opening scene, whereas in the play her role as the muse is not made clear until much later. In the play she is more a wispy inspiration than an outright pedagogue, as in the film.
In Act One, Gilda is living in sin with Leo, much to the chagrin of Otto. Jealousy flares up, even though it's clear that Leo and Otto pretty much love each other with the same intensity. The suggestion that Otto and Leo may be bisexual is not explicitly made, but it's obvious that there is something deeper than a conventional friendship going on here. In any case, Otto, Leo and Gilda are a spiritually inseparable triumvirate. Over the course of the play, Gilda lives with Leo, then Otto and then marries a dullish art dealer named Ernest, in her rather hopeless bid to gain "respectability."
Design for Living is thin as gossamer, and at first it looks like it's going nowhere and actually is not terribly funny at the outset. But by the second act the good lines pile up, and by the third act the piece is laugh-out-loud hilarious. It also gets deliciously nasty as the sexual innuendo and the bursting of high-society's balloons proceed apace.
The play glories in alternate lifestyles and moralities (as Gilda says near the end of the play, "We have our own decencies. We have our own ethics."). Nonetheless, theatergoers in 1933 were probably just as much disturbed by the play as they were amused.
The work also is interesting for its tentative explorations of a woman's role in the social order. Gilda's worth in the world is dependent on her ties to men, her roles in their success, and Coward understood this. As a result, Gilda's aimless soul, lack of self worth and identity, and feelings of indecision become poignant, without ever being cheaply sentimentalized.
Gilda has enough of this and flies off, away from all the men in her life. When she turns up again, she has broken down and given in to convention; she ends up married (having traded "vitality for poise"). When Leo and Otto re-enter her life, the lure of Bohemianism again tugs at her free soul...
Coward also mocks himself in the play, and muses on the fleetingness of fame. Leo is clearly meant to represent himself, especially when he remarks about reviewers criticizing the "thinness" of his plays. It was a criticism often lobbed at Coward.
For most of the way, I was going to give this three stars, but the last act is so full of great stuff, including crazy non-sequitur dialog from Leo and Otto that I had to up the thing to four stars. Although a blend of comedy of manners and outright farce, the play's resemblances to Marx Brothers movies and Hollywood screwball comedies become more pronounced by the end.
I also like the line of dialogue in which flirtatious seduction is called "measured skirmishing."
I conclude with selected bits of interesting dialogue from the play:
Gilda: "You can't expect a paper like the Times to be really interested in your petty little excursions in the theatre. After all, it is the organ of the nation."
Leo: "That sounds vaguely pornographic to me."
Leo: "Doesn't the Eye of Heaven mean anything to you?"
Gilda: "Only when it winks!"
Gilda: "Tell me Mr. Mercure, what do you think of the modern girl?"
Leo: "A silly bitch."
[Later, responding to the same question by a newspaperman]
Mr.Birbeck (reporter): "What is your opinion of the modern girl?"
Leo: "Downright, straightforward, upright."
---
Leo: "I enjoy meeting new people."
Gilda: "I enjoy meeting new people, too, but not second-hand ones."
---
Leo: "The whole business of living is a process of readjustments."
---
Gilda: "Good old romance, bobbing up again and wrapping up our crudities in a few veils."
---
Gilda: "In the future I intend to be only one thing...myself...My unadulterated self! Myself, without hangings, without trimmings, unencumbered by the winding tendrils of other people's demands."
---
[Otto the painter, Gilda's other lover, emerges from the bedroom]
Miss Hodge (the morally upright maid): "I'm a respectable woman...I don't mind a little fun now and then among friends, but I do draw the line at looseness."
Otto: "You're making a mistake..."
Miss Hodge: "'Ow do you mean?"
Otto: "You are making a mistake in daring to disapprove of something that has nothing to do with you whatever."
---
"There's a certain furtive delight in doing something consciously that you know perfectly well is thoroughly contemptible"
---
(Leo and Otto drunk)
Leo: "I'm so terribly sick of standing up."
Otto: "Human beings were never meant to stand up in the first place. It's all been a grave mistake."
---
Gilda: "People are wrong when they say the opera isn't what it used to be. It is what it used to be--that's what's wrong with it!"
---
Otto: "Certain emotions transcend even taste."
---
(KevinR@Ky 2016-amended)
I was prompted to read this play script after having read Sheridan Morley's final biography of Noel Coward and also because the hilarious 1933 screen adaptation by Ernst Lubitsch and Ben Hecht is one of my all-time favorite movies. (I'd wondered for many years why it was so obscure but with its release in recent years on Criterion DVD and Blu-ray the movie has found a wider audience).
It's quite instructive to read this just to see how far afield a movie version can go from the original stage source. Coward himself apparently never saw the film, and he probably didn't want to. He once remarked that the film only kept two lines of dialogue from his original play. Although slightly more than that did make the transition from stage to screen, the two animals are very different, but each great in its own way. The problem for screenwriter Ben Hecht was that the play was far too "dirty" to be acceptable movie fare to the censors and American audiences of 1933, but he got around the problem beautifully by writing what amounted to an equally clever proto-screwball comedy. The rebellious attitudes of the three main characters and their jabs at the stuffy social order and its conventional morality made the transition well from stage to screen.
Design for Living takes place first in Paris and then in London, during which time the play's free-spirited artists' muse, Gilda, becomes increasingly more stiflingly conventional.
Gilda is the inspiration of two men who adore her: Leo, a struggling playwright who is finally finding success, and Otto, a painter who has yet to achieve recognition. In the film version, Gilda's role as the mother hen to these two artistes is clearly stated right from the opening scene, whereas in the play her role as the muse is not made clear until much later. In the play she is more a wispy inspiration than an outright pedagogue, as in the film.
In Act One, Gilda is living in sin with Leo, much to the chagrin of Otto. Jealousy flares up, even though it's clear that Leo and Otto pretty much love each other with the same intensity. The suggestion that Otto and Leo may be bisexual is not explicitly made, but it's obvious that there is something deeper than a conventional friendship going on here. In any case, Otto, Leo and Gilda are a spiritually inseparable triumvirate. Over the course of the play, Gilda lives with Leo, then Otto and then marries a dullish art dealer named Ernest, in her rather hopeless bid to gain "respectability."
Design for Living is thin as gossamer, and at first it looks like it's going nowhere and actually is not terribly funny at the outset. But by the second act the good lines pile up, and by the third act the piece is laugh-out-loud hilarious. It also gets deliciously nasty as the sexual innuendo and the bursting of high-society's balloons proceed apace.
The play glories in alternate lifestyles and moralities (as Gilda says near the end of the play, "We have our own decencies. We have our own ethics."). Nonetheless, theatergoers in 1933 were probably just as much disturbed by the play as they were amused.
The work also is interesting for its tentative explorations of a woman's role in the social order. Gilda's worth in the world is dependent on her ties to men, her roles in their success, and Coward understood this. As a result, Gilda's aimless soul, lack of self worth and identity, and feelings of indecision become poignant, without ever being cheaply sentimentalized.
Gilda has enough of this and flies off, away from all the men in her life. When she turns up again, she has broken down and given in to convention; she ends up married (having traded "vitality for poise"). When Leo and Otto re-enter her life, the lure of Bohemianism again tugs at her free soul...
Coward also mocks himself in the play, and muses on the fleetingness of fame. Leo is clearly meant to represent himself, especially when he remarks about reviewers criticizing the "thinness" of his plays. It was a criticism often lobbed at Coward.
For most of the way, I was going to give this three stars, but the last act is so full of great stuff, including crazy non-sequitur dialog from Leo and Otto that I had to up the thing to four stars. Although a blend of comedy of manners and outright farce, the play's resemblances to Marx Brothers movies and Hollywood screwball comedies become more pronounced by the end.
I also like the line of dialogue in which flirtatious seduction is called "measured skirmishing."
I conclude with selected bits of interesting dialogue from the play:
Gilda: "You can't expect a paper like the Times to be really interested in your petty little excursions in the theatre. After all, it is the organ of the nation."
Leo: "That sounds vaguely pornographic to me."
Leo: "Doesn't the Eye of Heaven mean anything to you?"
Gilda: "Only when it winks!"
Gilda: "Tell me Mr. Mercure, what do you think of the modern girl?"
Leo: "A silly bitch."
[Later, responding to the same question by a newspaperman]
Mr.Birbeck (reporter): "What is your opinion of the modern girl?"
Leo: "Downright, straightforward, upright."
---
Leo: "I enjoy meeting new people."
Gilda: "I enjoy meeting new people, too, but not second-hand ones."
---
Leo: "The whole business of living is a process of readjustments."
---
Gilda: "Good old romance, bobbing up again and wrapping up our crudities in a few veils."
---
Gilda: "In the future I intend to be only one thing...myself...My unadulterated self! Myself, without hangings, without trimmings, unencumbered by the winding tendrils of other people's demands."
---
[Otto the painter, Gilda's other lover, emerges from the bedroom]
Miss Hodge (the morally upright maid): "I'm a respectable woman...I don't mind a little fun now and then among friends, but I do draw the line at looseness."
Otto: "You're making a mistake..."
Miss Hodge: "'Ow do you mean?"
Otto: "You are making a mistake in daring to disapprove of something that has nothing to do with you whatever."
---
"There's a certain furtive delight in doing something consciously that you know perfectly well is thoroughly contemptible"
---
(Leo and Otto drunk)
Leo: "I'm so terribly sick of standing up."
Otto: "Human beings were never meant to stand up in the first place. It's all been a grave mistake."
---
Gilda: "People are wrong when they say the opera isn't what it used to be. It is what it used to be--that's what's wrong with it!"
---
Otto: "Certain emotions transcend even taste."
---
(KevinR@Ky 2016-amended)
December 21, 2016
The actual facts are so simple. I love you. You love me. You love Otto. I love Otto. Otto loves you. Otto loves me. There now! Start to unravel from there.
Noël Coward’s Design for Living opened on Broadway in 1933 because it was too risqué for London’s West End. Even today, you probably wouldn’t find it on broadcast television before 10 o’clock. Painter Otto Sylvus and playwright Leo Mercuré were fast friends and destitute unknowns in Paris’ Latin Quarter when they both met and later fell in love with fellow bohemian Gilda. Eventually, Otto wins Gilda into becoming his lover, but the threesome each love each other whole-heartedly — until the day that Gilda falls into Leo’s arms.
Fast-forward two years, and Leo has become a very successful playwright. Gilda, still bohemian to the core, chafes at the publicity and what she fears is the commercialization of his art. The play explores monogamy, the many facets of love, and the temptation of conventional life. The nature of Leo’s and Otto’s relationship with each other remains ambiguous, providing additional food for thought. With very little revision, Design for Living could be set in fin de siècle Paris, 1950s Greenwich Village, 1960s San Francisco, or present-day Brooklyn. For bohemian intellectuals, the quandaries remain the same. Kudos to L.A. Theatre Works for bringing back this thought-provoking play.
Lastly, the fact that Noël Coward himself played the playwright Leo while Alfred Lunt and Joan Fontaine played Otto and Gilda have made folks wonder for decades; I too found myself wondering how much that threesome’s real-life relationship made it into the play.
August 30, 2018
Not-at-all-bizarre love triangle. I guess this was pretty shocking when it premiered in 1932, though. I've always loved stories of privileged people being ridiculous.
I listened to the L.A. Theatre Works full-cast recording. Well written, well acted, slightly marred by the fact that Claire Forlani pronounces c's and k's as g's for some reason. Also she pronounces t's as d's. Once I noticed I gouldn't stop nodicing it.
I'll have to check out the movie version.
I listened to the L.A. Theatre Works full-cast recording. Well written, well acted, slightly marred by the fact that Claire Forlani pronounces c's and k's as g's for some reason. Also she pronounces t's as d's. Once I noticed I gouldn't stop nodicing it.
I'll have to check out the movie version.
August 4, 2023
Pues absolutamente encantadora, por supuesto. Tiene los pecadillos de ese teatro burgués que luego tanto se exportó en España en los años 20-30, por lo que la peli de Lubitsch es mejor sin duda, aunque esta obra tiene a su favor todo lo inglés. Por ejemplo: «I wish I believed in God, the Daily Mail and "Mother India"». Para tatuárselo.
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September 18, 2023Funny that Noel Coward seemed to be so upset about the movie adaptation of this (specifically that the only line they kept was "pass the mustard"). The movie is much stronger; the Lubitsch Touch elevates it to another level.
Still, Coward was a visionary in portraying such forward attitudes about sex which still seem scandalous to many nearly a century later.
Still, Coward was a visionary in portraying such forward attitudes about sex which still seem scandalous to many nearly a century later.
August 11, 2023
The Throuple. I would love to write a modern screenplay for this.
Noel is so quick with his dialogue that I ended up re-reading entire scenes just to feel alive again.
Noel is so quick with his dialogue that I ended up re-reading entire scenes just to feel alive again.
August 4, 2014
Noël Coward’s play Design for Living is a very dated play ostensibly about a love triangle (hinting at bisexuality), but it's really an exploration of being downright shameless. At one point, the female lead in this love triangle asks one of her male counterparts, “haven’t you got any shame at all?” To which he replies, “just about as much as you have.” To wit: none.
The actual dynamic of this ménage à trois is very repetitious: two partner up and live together quietly pining for the third while that third member goes out in the world and makes his/her fortune, only to return and change places with one of the two who then takes his/her turn to live together with one of the three until all three have had a go in this dynamic and will be reunited as a group in the final act. And a lot of words and mildly repressed histrionics accompanies this repetitious arrangement, until the final act.
So the final act is where the heart of the play resides -- but what an unaccountably mean-spirited dénouement (albeit, it's the wittiest part of the play)! A fourth character who has conventionally married the female lead is made to be an unwitting comic cuckold once they go whole-hog and decide to live as a triangle; that strawman character is actually named Ernest Friedman, perhaps the most portentous name one could think of once you know what Coward is up to.
I probably would have appreciated this play more if I had read it in my 20s than reading it now -- it’s a young person’s play, when the idea of flouting social conventions is seemingly a source of liberating exuberance. But age teaches us that doing so at anyone else’s expense actually has a very corrosive impact on the supposed unconventional actor. When Ernest says in disgust to the three of them, “I see a ruthless egotism, an utter disregard for anyone’s feelings but your own,” I think I’m meant to find his judgment distasteful but actually I find his response refreshingly honest and human. I would not want to live in any contact with these three people, at all, and I gladly set the play aside once finished with a slight sense of shame for thinking I might have been attracted to these type of people at any point in my life.
The actual dynamic of this ménage à trois is very repetitious: two partner up and live together quietly pining for the third while that third member goes out in the world and makes his/her fortune, only to return and change places with one of the two who then takes his/her turn to live together with one of the three until all three have had a go in this dynamic and will be reunited as a group in the final act. And a lot of words and mildly repressed histrionics accompanies this repetitious arrangement, until the final act.
So the final act is where the heart of the play resides -- but what an unaccountably mean-spirited dénouement (albeit, it's the wittiest part of the play)! A fourth character who has conventionally married the female lead is made to be an unwitting comic cuckold once they go whole-hog and decide to live as a triangle; that strawman character is actually named Ernest Friedman, perhaps the most portentous name one could think of once you know what Coward is up to.
I probably would have appreciated this play more if I had read it in my 20s than reading it now -- it’s a young person’s play, when the idea of flouting social conventions is seemingly a source of liberating exuberance. But age teaches us that doing so at anyone else’s expense actually has a very corrosive impact on the supposed unconventional actor. When Ernest says in disgust to the three of them, “I see a ruthless egotism, an utter disregard for anyone’s feelings but your own,” I think I’m meant to find his judgment distasteful but actually I find his response refreshingly honest and human. I would not want to live in any contact with these three people, at all, and I gladly set the play aside once finished with a slight sense of shame for thinking I might have been attracted to these type of people at any point in my life.
November 18, 2016
I had heard that Design for Living was a scandalous-in-its-time comedy about bisexual polyamory, so I expected it to be a naughty and frothy romp. But I found it a much sadder, angrier play than I anticipated. The characters’ unconventional sexual mores don’t seem to make them happy; they think free love will liberate them but it mostly seems to lead to discontentment and anguish.
The two men in the play’s poly-triad – painter Otto and playwright Leo – are not very distinctly characterized, but the woman, Gilda, is an enormously powerful role. Gilda is full of a frustrated, neurotic, self-loathing energy. She’s a liberated woman by 1930s standards, but she still can’t seem to imagine herself without a man, and she is keenly conscious that the world sees her as a mere dilettante (she is an interior decorator) while lauding Otto and Leo as “real” artists. The driving force of the plot is Gilda’s dissatisfaction and inability to be happy with what she has.
I wasn’t expecting it, but this play reminded me a lot of Jules and Jim, another story in which the close relationship between two bohemian men is upended by the arrival of an alluring, unstable woman. Granted, Design for Living ends more happily than Jules and Jim – in the last act, Leo, Otto, and Gilda’s free-spirited ways are contrasted with the stuffiness of conventional society, and the play finally starts to feel like a comedy. But Acts One and Two, despite the glamorous pajamas-and-cocktails trappings, are a surprisingly dark story about, in Noel Coward’s own words, “glib, over-articulate and amoral creatures […] [who] are like moths in a pool of light, unable to tolerate the lonely outer darkness, and equally unable to share the light without colliding constantly and bruising one another’s wings.”
The two men in the play’s poly-triad – painter Otto and playwright Leo – are not very distinctly characterized, but the woman, Gilda, is an enormously powerful role. Gilda is full of a frustrated, neurotic, self-loathing energy. She’s a liberated woman by 1930s standards, but she still can’t seem to imagine herself without a man, and she is keenly conscious that the world sees her as a mere dilettante (she is an interior decorator) while lauding Otto and Leo as “real” artists. The driving force of the plot is Gilda’s dissatisfaction and inability to be happy with what she has.
I wasn’t expecting it, but this play reminded me a lot of Jules and Jim, another story in which the close relationship between two bohemian men is upended by the arrival of an alluring, unstable woman. Granted, Design for Living ends more happily than Jules and Jim – in the last act, Leo, Otto, and Gilda’s free-spirited ways are contrasted with the stuffiness of conventional society, and the play finally starts to feel like a comedy. But Acts One and Two, despite the glamorous pajamas-and-cocktails trappings, are a surprisingly dark story about, in Noel Coward’s own words, “glib, over-articulate and amoral creatures […] [who] are like moths in a pool of light, unable to tolerate the lonely outer darkness, and equally unable to share the light without colliding constantly and bruising one another’s wings.”
February 20, 2024
Een komedie over een driehoeksverhouding. Verbazingwekkend hoe Coward honderd jaar geleden al durfde te spotten met de Britse way of living, de hypocrisie, het kille conformisme, de zelfingenomenheid.
Coward welsprekend pleidooi voor eerlijke zelfkennis, zijn tekening van de almacht van obsessieve passie, het komt nog steeds vlijmscherp aan anno 2023.
Zijn cynische oneliners zijn hoogst vermakelijk, maar ze overwoekeren bij momenten wel de dialogen.
Coward welsprekend pleidooi voor eerlijke zelfkennis, zijn tekening van de almacht van obsessieve passie, het komt nog steeds vlijmscherp aan anno 2023.
Zijn cynische oneliners zijn hoogst vermakelijk, maar ze overwoekeren bij momenten wel de dialogen.
July 30, 2018
Scandalous in England: some shouting, lots of sophisticated lines, sort of raunchy, not the stereotypical ending or middle, enjoyable, bohemian, strangely happy ever after.
December 7, 2023
3.5*
I generally like Coward's plays but I found the dialogue in this one too artificial to really like it.
I generally like Coward's plays but I found the dialogue in this one too artificial to really like it.
August 12, 2020
very funny and modern for the time
January 29, 2018
This play's light and fun tone is weighed down by Gilda's speeches delivered in a flat tone by Claire Forlani so that they come off as being read and it's near impossible to see how she could possibly be so enchanting to all the males in the play. She's not terrifically insightful or intellectual and no one discusses her as a great beauty in the play so it's impossible to understand why anyone should throw their lives over for her. Perhaps another actress could have carried it off and perhaps on the page her charms are more apparent. The interplay between Hamish Linklater as Leo and Douglas Weston as Otto is much more believably enchanting and while much is made of the play's hints at bisexuality in the menage, this production either cuts the most suggestive lines (a strange choice for modern times) or its less apparent than suggested by on-stage non-verbals. Either way, despite it being considered one of Coward's most provocative, it isn't his most entertaining.
January 5, 2019
This play is thoroughly enjoyable. It was recommended to me due to a similarity with Oscar Wilde's writings, especially The Importance of Being Earnest.
This is not the play for you if you are looking for a serious read; instead, it is playful. Coward never takes himself too seriously, allowing the reader to feel like they are in on the joke, that the lovers' spats and quarrels are all in good fun.
Design for Living is rather risque for its time (1930's), yet it could only go so far. One branch of the love triangle is not explicit, yet the subtle implications are there. In this manner, it is reminiscent of the writings of E.M. Forster or DH Lawrence (both exceptional authors).
If you are looking for a quick, light-hearted read with a hearty amount of banter and dry humour, I would recommend this play!
This is not the play for you if you are looking for a serious read; instead, it is playful. Coward never takes himself too seriously, allowing the reader to feel like they are in on the joke, that the lovers' spats and quarrels are all in good fun.
Design for Living is rather risque for its time (1930's), yet it could only go so far. One branch of the love triangle is not explicit, yet the subtle implications are there. In this manner, it is reminiscent of the writings of E.M. Forster or DH Lawrence (both exceptional authors).
If you are looking for a quick, light-hearted read with a hearty amount of banter and dry humour, I would recommend this play!
November 22, 2018
Noel Coward uses his wit again to present us the love life of three pretentious artists who should have known the solution for their troubles much sooner.
The play was published in 1932 and it's definitely waaay ahead of its time, portraying a polyamourous relationship in a modern society, even though sometimes it still shows some old-fashioned traits about the way society sees woman and what they must be in order to be "respectful". I kind of see a few of Oscar Wilde's vibe in Coward's work, due to its wittiness and sense of humor. If you're into that, you will definitely enjoy his works.
The play was published in 1932 and it's definitely waaay ahead of its time, portraying a polyamourous relationship in a modern society, even though sometimes it still shows some old-fashioned traits about the way society sees woman and what they must be in order to be "respectful". I kind of see a few of Oscar Wilde's vibe in Coward's work, due to its wittiness and sense of humor. If you're into that, you will definitely enjoy his works.
July 13, 2022
I'll be honest, I watched the Lubitsch film Design for Living recently and really loved it, so I've been wanting to read the play. I went for the LA Theater Works recording so I could enjoy a quality performance as well. I went in knowing that the two were different and was surprised at just how different. I honestly enjoy the movie more, but the play is still an enjoyable experience. It didn't blow me away but it's solid enough.
February 28, 2024
Outstanding! Funny, with complex relationship dynamics between thoroughly enjoyable characters. All three relationships are given adequate time to be developed, which makes the bizarre story work perfectly. Daring sexual politics for the time. Provocative, not in a banal shock-value way, but rather in a clever, engaging, thought-provoking manner.
March 16, 2024
“we’re all of a piece, the three of us.”
Coward bites dysfunctional relationships to the quick; dragging the glittery, putrid entrails of love in its most unconventional forms, he adorns his witty dialogue with the lot. Highly recommend the Lubitsch’s 1933 adaptation, by the way - pre-code goodness with my favorite bit on “gentlemen agreements”.
Coward bites dysfunctional relationships to the quick; dragging the glittery, putrid entrails of love in its most unconventional forms, he adorns his witty dialogue with the lot. Highly recommend the Lubitsch’s 1933 adaptation, by the way - pre-code goodness with my favorite bit on “gentlemen agreements”.
June 11, 2020
It’s a play about polymorphism before it was widely discussed (not that it’s widely discussed now but the fact I know the term). It’s somewhat predictable but seeing the role of Gilda performed well would be a treat since she is nuanced.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 12, 2022
What a funny problem this play presents. It’s a great idea - still titillating now, even in a world of scripted reality TV. But the dialogue is by turns too showy, too expository, and often just downright mean.
February 10, 2023
A contender for one of Coward's most daring plays. The today's climate of exploring one's sexuality, I would expect DESIGN FOR LIVING to be performed far more often than it is. I do not think it is one of the author's best, but it is charming and darn interesting.
December 25, 2019
Too boring, too slow, too predictable for reading yet I can imagine it can be fine on set -- but only if the actors are superb to compensate what text is lacking.
March 27, 2020
Mais uma peça irónica e mordaz de Noel Coward, terminada neste Dia Mundial do Teatro 🎭❤
March 5, 2021
Much much more entertaining than I expected from a play from the early 1930s! The play is witty and full of interesting characters and scandal, highly recommended!
August 15, 2022
Deliciously contemptible characters and some biting lines but the plot (or lack thereof) strays a little too far into gratuitous amorality and-dare I say it-dullness.
January 27, 2023
7/10 play, I liked it concluding with egregious laughter
February 20, 2023
Daft but I liked it
May 1, 2023
Discomforting but feels like there’s something more there
June 14, 2023
Just start a fucking polycule and get over yourselves
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