Design For Living Tickets

Relationships are dropped, rekindled, betrayed and intertwined in Noel Coward’s “Design for Living”, which is coming to the Old Vic in 2010. It will be the latest opportunity for audiences to experience the comic play he first presented in the 1930s as Anthony Page takes on directing duties and a host of performers take to the stage.

The plot features four central characters and by the end of the play audiences will have noticed the highly questionable attitudes that three of them have towards relationships. They are Gilda, Otto and Leo and over the course of the play their relationships with one another will change and grow more complex, whilst their friend Ernest bears the brunt.

Gilda and Otto begin the show in a relationship, but after Gilda cheats on him with Leo she instead embarks on a relationship with the latter. Fast forward and we catch up with them as Otto arrives once again and seemingly rekindles their romance, only for Glinda to ditch them both and marry Ernest. When Otto and Leo both attempt to win Glinda back once again, Ernest realises the absurdity of the attitudes he is witnessing.

Three of the actors portraying the central roles in the production are Lisa Dillon, Tom Burke and Andrew Scott and they are likely to successfully bring these roles to life with previous experience laying the foundations. Dillon will also be starring in “A Flea in Her Ear” for the Old Vic later in the year and her previous credits include “Cambridge Spies” and “Under the Blue Sky” at the Royal Court Theatre. Burke, meanwhile, has appeared in various movies, television programmes and stage shows for the likes of the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Donmar Warehouse, with credits like “Donkey Punch”, “Telstar” and “The Trial of Tony Blair”.

When audiences first witnessed “Design for Living” it was in New York in the 1930s and due to the censorship rules in the London theatre scene at the time, it would be some time before the London production opened, with a movie version appearing in the intervening years. But when it was finally staged at the end of the decade it would present audiences with a truly compelling comic play.

Design for Living appears at the Old Vic from Wednesday 15th September 2010 (previews from Friday 3rd September 2010) and runs to Saturday 27th November 2010.