"When the closeted British actor and playwright Noël Coward wrote Design for Living in the early 1930s, being gay was a crime in New York and London. Police weaponized entrapment. And Depression-era class warfare simmered with resentment against the artistic and creative classes-"Bright Young Things" who didn't stand in bread lines and who lived decadent and self-indulgent lives. Onto this stony soil Coward casts a play with all those targets and more:"
"Coward introduces Gilda (Caitlin Rose), a trust fund baby and underworked interior designer. She lives in Paris with Otto (Joe Cullen), who lives as a Bohemian unsuccessful painter; sleeps with Leo (KJ Snyder), a recently successful playwright; and talks about a new Matisse painting with Ernest (Sean D. Lujan), a successful elderly art dealer. Back from a successful New York play opening, Leo celebrates with Gilda in Otto's bed-that he and Otto were lovers is on the shelf, for now."
Set in the early 1930s when homosexuality was criminalized in New York and London, the drama uses police entrapment and Depression-era class resentment as backdrops. A trust-fund interior designer named Gilda alternates intimacy with Otto, a struggling Bohemian painter, and Leo, a recently successful playwright, while conferring with Ernest, an established art dealer. A three-person romantic entanglement unravels amid sexual jealousy and shifting fortunes. Success and role reversals inflame rivalry and reconciliation as the men seek comfort in each other after betrayals. Themes include the perils of affluence, the costs of artistic success, and the destructive effects of strict personal fidelity.
Read at Portland Mercury
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