KEY POINTS:
A giddy comedy of manners," said London's Times newspaper about Noel Coward's play Design for Living.
Giddy, comic and mannered it is, as the three leads of the Auckland Theatre Company production run scenes under the watchful eye of director Roy Ward.
At times Lisa Chappell, Curtis Vowell and Richard Edge are high-spirited and witty, squeezing as much comedy as they can from a scene where a man discovers his girlfriend and best friend have spent the night together.
Then they try for a more natural take as if they were three ordinary people confronting a painfully awkward situation. There can be a dozen different interpretations of the same lines and it is clear to see how a comedy of manners with a raunchy reputation can be re-fashioned as a worthy drama.
There lies the challenge facing Ward and the Design for Living cast.
Do they play it for laughs or do they delve deeper to find a more complex story? If they go for laughter alone, how do three loveable but ultimately self-obsessed characters appeal?
Then there is the question of nostalgia. The play is 75 years old, so will it be funny today or will we snigger at how "quaint" they were back then and miss the witty asides because we no longer use language the same way?
It is not difficult to see how one can get giddy thinking about Design for Living which, as Chappell says, looks at first glance like a fluffy comedy but is more an open invitation to question social convention.
Written in 1932, when Noel Coward was at the height of his success with multiple productions in London's West End and New York's Broadway, Design for Living starred Coward and his best friends, husband and wife Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne.
Gilda (Chappell) is a vivacious interior designer who loves struggling artist Otto (Edge) and his best friend, budding playwright Leo (Vowell). But it is not as simple as a girl loves boys menage a trois.
It is also a bisexual love triangle which is never addressed directly but alluded to through hints and innuendos. ATC's artistic director Colin McColl says Coward smuggled some fairly outrageous ideas and characters on stage in the guise of a glamorous and frivolous comedy.
Ward says they will bring out the comedy because it was not written as a proscriptive plan for living. The characters will be played sympathetically but will highlight the black comedy of their situation.
"Their relationship is not about sexuality or perversity or lust but love," says Chappell.
"They genuinely love each other so there is a moral dilemma about what happens when you have a love which does not fit with social norms and expectations."
The design emphasises the timelessness of Coward's work. Set designer Robin Rawstorne says to make it fussy or nostalgic would stop audiences seeing the characters.
Ward almost did not consider Chappell for Gilda, thinking she would not be a theatre actress after her stint on television in McLeod's Daughters.
"The first time I met Roy, he didn't even say hello," she says, "He just gave me the script and told me I had a very good agent, who had bullied him into it."
"It was a good lesson in the merit of auditions and taking a fresh look at people," Ward says.
What: Design for Living
Where: Maidment Theatre, Feb 14-Mar 8
