Roundabout Theatre Company presents Design for Living directed by Robert Feldberg
Design for Living: A play revival, by Noel Coward. Previews begin
Friday; opens March 15. Presented by the Roundabout Theater Company
at the American Airlines Theater, 227 W. 42nd St. (212) 719-1300.
It's hard to shock people nowadays, and it would seem especially
hard for a Noel Coward comedy written 70 years ago to accomplish
that.
But, said Alan Cumming, the premise of Design for Living is still an eye-opener. The versatile Scottish actor whose roles have ranged from a star- making turn as the decadent master of ceremonies in Cabaret to the comically evil Rooster Hannigan in the TV adaptation of Annie plays Otto, a painter and one of the three principal characters in the Coward play.
Otto and the other two, Gilda (Jennifer Ehle), an interior decorator, and Leo (Dominic West), a playwright, have an unusually close relationship.
"It's about three people who can't be apart from each other, who need to be together," said Cumming. "They all but sleep together. It's a play that looks at if three people loved each other, what would be the way to make it work out. It's a really bold idea."
The play, revived fairly often, is frequently performed as bubbling comedy, with its provocative and disturbing elements downplayed.
Cumming said, however, that this revival focuses on the implications of the three-way relationship.
Speaking after a rehearsal, the actor said the play was quite demanding. "I'm so overstimulated by it. It's intense, seething with all this stuff how are we going to live? It's full of ideas."
He said his involvement in the production started about a year- and-a-half ago when he wrote a fan letter to director Joe Mantello, whom he didn't know, after seeing two plays Mantello had staged.
Mantello invited Cumming to participate in a reading of Design for Living. "It was weird because it's a play I've always wanted to do" but the actor had to decline because of other commitments. "I said I would be interested in doing a production of it, though."
Cumming made an enormous introductory splash in the United States in Cabaret, winning a Tony for his portrayal of the epicene emcee.
Since he was little-known here, there was a danger he could be typecast as an interpreter of bizarre roles. But the actor said that hardly occurred to him.
"I don't really worry about things like that," he said. "I just do roles I enjoy."
There have been many roles since for Cumming, who divides his time between the United States and England, but has recently been spending most of it on this side of the Atlantic.
Besides acting in films ranging from The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas to Eyes Wide Shut, he's also just finished directing a movie, The Anniversary Party (which he co-wrote), with Jennifer Jason Leigh.
After Coward's play, he'll take time to write a novel.
For now, though, he's wrestling with Design for Living. Said Cumming, "I love to dissect a play, but this is like a piece of music. It's hard to chop into bits."