My reasons for wanting to see Noel Coward's Design for Living were shallow. Principally I liked the publicity shot.
Beautiful, huh? Secondly, I thought I would probably like to be in it. You can draw your own conclusions about that. (And I was not wrong. So, director please.)

Luckily, the show looked as beautiful as promised. Three gorgeous sets. A garretty paint-spattered attic. A very art nouveau flat in London. And a Manhattan penthouse complete with sweeping staircase, balcony and expansive NYC panoramic view that, I'm ashamed to say, caused me to utter a small under my breath gasp as the fire curtain was winched up. The costumes were beautiful. Which reinforced my desire to be Her. And the people were (where necessary - obviously servants don't count) beautiful too.

The story is pretty stupid. The three love each other. And couple and uncouple and recouple over a period of time. All ends happily - though only unfortunately for the three. Much like Grid Iron / Douglas Maxwell's Spring Awakening a couple weeks ago at the Trav, the themes of it would have been shocking - not to say appalling - in its day but seem relatively inconsequential today.

But this isn't to say that they didn't do it beautifully for they did. Impeccable timing. A majestic command of the text (as you'd hope, as this was the last night of a couple of months of it). Mr Director, Anthony Page, has a lovely sense of comedy. And his two boys played to it superbly. The girl of the three has a ridiculous part as she's all conscience riddled and full of the vapours so this is a part that would be hard to do well. Given the circumstances, Lisa Dillon did pretty well. I found her slightly irritating but suspect this was character rather than portrayal.

The taller of the two boys, well I'm sure he was very good but I had no interest in him - shallow to say - as my attention was principally taken by the shorter boy (no change there, then), the lovely Andrew Scott. Who was superbly captivating. But perhaps my motives for saying this are too base? I discovered on programme scrutiny that this same boy was he who featured so beautifully in Seawall at the Trav a couple of years ago. I loved him then and shall love him again now. My new actor crush.

So all in all, a cheerfully frivolous night. I'd urge you to go and see it but you can't as it's finished. I did have one flicker of regret when they were taking an ecstatic curtain call. As this was us last Saturday night. How time goes.