STAGE AND SCREEN
THE THEATRE
41, Design for Living." By Noel Coward. Af the Haymarket. Design for Living is built around three glib, over-articulate and amoral creatures whose lives have a tendency to con- verge. Leo is a dramatist, Gilda a decorator, Otto a painter. Any two of them are generally at any given moment living together. First it is Otto and Leo (incidentally it seems a weakness in the play, though it may be intentional, that these two are not more differentiated as characters), then it is Otto and Gilda, then Leo and Gilda, and finally—after an interval in which Gilda has left them and married someone else—it is all three of them together. Design for Living, though ironi- cally meant, may seem to quiet tastes not an inevitable title for the play. General Post or Animal Grab would have had homely qualities to commend them.
It is a pity that the play has had to wait so long for a production. It is as a whole a very entertaining piece, but it looks every month of its age. It is not so much that it is dated in any particular respect (though in fact it is—quite a number of the jokes could do with modernisation), as that the whole thing—both in choice of theme and in treatment— seems a little old-fashioned. The theatre to-day does not often seem visibly to progress, but it has, during the last few years, learned a thing or two in the technique of insulting conventional tastes. There is really very little to Design for Living except its plot and its humour. The plot would some years ago have had the commercial advantage of seeming mildly scandalous, but now has little more than an old-world charm. The humOur, entertaining though much of it is, be- longs to a type which has in general now given place to a later fashion. The characters are not in themselves particu- larly interesting. That the play nevertheless holds the atten- tion on the stage is a convincing tribute to the exceptional theatrical competence of its author. But though it holds the stage, there is about the proceedings the air much less of a first London performance than of a successful revival.
The acting, at the dress rehearsal, fell very considerably short of perfection. Miss Diana Wynyard (Gilda) and Mr. Alan Webb (her future husband), who have the stage to themselves to begin with, were for some time not able to achieve the right atmosphere, and much of the possible effect of the opening scene seemed to be lost. Mr. Anton Walbrook (Otto) brightened up matters with his first short appearance, but the play resumed its previous listless state when he dis- appeared and Mr. Rex Harrison (Leo) took his place. Things did not go really smoothly until the second act; from then onwards there was little to complain of except a certain lack of spirit generally in the acting. Mr. Rex Harrison's per- formance is competent, but not exciting or even persuasive. We are supposed to believe that between Leo, Otto and Gilda there exists a force of attraction which makes it impossible for them to live for long without one another's company. Mr. Harrison did not for a moment convince his audience that, so far as Leo was concerned, this attraction was real : Leo walked in and out of situations as casually as he might have entered and left an acquaintance's house. Mr. Anton Walbrook was infinitely more successful with Otto; he was often in- audible (he was suffering from an obvious cold), but he made his character consistently vivid, entertaining and interesting. Miss Wynyard started (in Mr. Webb's company) unsurely, but after the beginning her performance was a delight : it would be impossible to have the part more subtly and charm- ingly played. Mr. Alan Webb lived down his unsure start, and by the time of the last act had become quite exceptionally good. Of the performances in the subsidiary parts the only one that needs to be mentioned is Miss Dorothy Hamilton's vivacious sketch of a domestic drudge. As a whole they tended to prove, what the major parts had suggested, that the only satisfactory producer of a play by Mr. Coward is the author. Mr. Harold French probably did as well as anyone but him would have done.
This version differs from the original in a few unimportant respects. The new ending is probably an improvement, but one has to regret the celebrated joke about The Times
DEREK VERSCHOYLE.
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