A & C BLACK : Design for Living

A&C Black Publishers Ltd, 50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP Tel: +44(0)207 631 5600 fax: +44 (0)207 631 5800

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Design for Living		Available RRP £9.99 Online Price £8.99 Quantity
	Author Noël Coward Pub DateSeptember 2010 ISBN9781408140079 FormatPaperback Dimensions198x129mm Extent112 pages

OverviewReviews

'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.

About the Author(s)

Noël Coward made his name as a playwright with The Vortex (1924), in which he also appeared. His numerous other successful plays included Hay Fever, Private Lives, Design for Living, and Blithe Spirit. During the war he wrote screenplays such as Brief Encounter (1944) and This Happy Breed (1942). His volumes of verse, autobiography and letters have all been published to acclaim by Methuen Drama. Coward was knighted in 1970 and died three years later in Jamaica.

Press Reviews

"'one of Coward's most provocative plays'" Henry Hitchings, Evening Standard (London), 16.9.10

"'its fusion of passion and mischief remains striking and there is something undeniably heady about its celebration of a kind of sexual liberation that looks a lot like flippancy'" Henry Hitchings, Evening Standard (London), 16.9.10

"'Coward's chosen title means the play sounds like a manifesto. It isn't. But it does present an audacious case for the pleasures of irresponsibility.'" Henry Hitchings, Evening Standard (London), 16.9.10

"'the play offers a genuine contest between the bohemian talentocracy and moral orthodoxy.'" Michael Billington, Guardian, 16.9.10

"'Coward's play addresses the peculiar disappointments of success, the misplaced nostalgia felt by renowned artists for their years of struggle, and the tragic fact that celebrity propels one into the company of billionaire halfwits. Kurt Cobain, who found success a prison he had to shoot his way out of, would have appreciated this strange and sometimes extraordinarily wrathful play.'" Lloyd Evans, Spectator, 25.9.10

"'The play may, in part, be about the love that dare not speak its name, yet what cannot be said is ardently implied in this fast-and-loose, extravagant, hilarious exploration of passion between two men and a woman.'" Kate Kellaway, Observer, 19.9.10

"'Noel Coward's Design for Living is a funny and sad study of bisexuality: Otto and Leo love each other, but they also love Gilda, and she, in turn, loves them both.'" Tim Walker, Sunday Telegraph, 19.9.10

"'Three's company, two's a crowd in this 1933 Noel Coward comedy about an arty trio who wind up in a menage a trois.'" Paul Taylor, Independent, 20.9.10

"'Noel Coward's 1932 play is a whirl of passions, exquisite poses and pain, travelling in style from Paris to London and New York, each act presenting a new erotic arrangement of the menage a trois. It's elegant and sparkling.'" Sam Marlowe, Time Out (London), 23.9.10

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