(See front cover)
Twelve years ago an ambitious, talented young Englishman came to Manhattan and was disheartened to find the Land of Opportunity a place where one seemed to divide one's time between lying in bed in a cheap hotel, counting squashed insects on the ceiling, and sitting on park benches, hungry. This U. S. appeared to have two bright spots, however, in the persons of an actor and actress who were quite fond of each other and of him. They were very considerate people. When the actress took him to sing and play the piano for his supper at George S. Kaufman's, she made sure that Mr. Kaufman also paid the cab fare.
Last week Manhattan audiences witnessed the dramatic fruit of this long, three-cornered friendship, Design For Living—"a play about three people who love each other very much." The erstwhile young Englishman, Noel Coward, had written it and was acting in it. So were Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne.
The situation with which Design For Living concerns itself is somewhat unusual for light comedy—polyandry. Act I, laid in Paris, finds Actress Fontanne as Gilda (pronounced Jilda), an interior decorator vaguely troubled by the uncertainties of life. There are times when she wishes she could believe in "God and the Daily Mail and Mother India." Physiological studies do not wholly satisfy her. ("If you knew what was going on inside you, you would probably be bitterly offended.") In her quandary she is about to switch her allegiance from Otto (Mr. Lunt), a painter, to his good friend, playwriting Leo (Mr. Coward). According to Leo, he and Gilda have just gone for "an unpremeditated roll in the hay."
Act II discovers Leo and Gilda comfortably sinning in an attractive London flat. Both, however, pine for their absent crony Otto. Gilda, it appears, is not so happy as she might be with Leo's theatrical success. While he is away at a houseparty, up bobs Otto, fresh from a voyage on a tramp steamer. "The circle has turned," says he, "and it's my turn now." But next morning Gilda leaves notes for both her lovers, goes off to Manhattan to marry an art broker and find, she hopes, peace. When Leo and Otto meet and read their letters they collapse into mutually brandied bathos.
Two years later Gilda is inhabiting a gaudy penthouse full of Grand Rapids moderne furniture which she is selling to people with more money than taste. Suddenly in the midst of a party Leo and Otto appear, identically and immaculately clad in faultless evening dress. They have, it seems, been traveling. "You must forgive our clothes," says urbane Leo. "We just got off a freight boat." Soon the safely married Gilda succumbs to their witty charms, and when the art broker-husband returns from Chicago he is told that the three will resume their private offensive against the social code. While he expostulates against the madness of this incorrigible trio they slap their thighs with mirth. The curtain falls, the play having evidently solved all but the practical difficulty of how Gilda, Leo and Otto can roll in the hay simultaneously.