A brief welcome to Design For Living, up from Greenwich to the Globe. There’s rather more to it than to many of Noël Coward’s comedies and though the concept of a ménage a trois might be less outrageous than it once was, the debate still works. Maria Aitken is, as always, delicious and her lovers are handsomely represented by Ian Ogilvy and Gary Bond.

Looking again at Design for Living 50 years after it was written, one speculates as to whether this play would have been regarded as daring and piquant in 1932 had it been written by anyone other than Noël Coward. Having had the opportunity of seeing most of Coward’s major plays over the last 15 years, the London theatregoer might well share my conclusion that this is easily his silliest, clearly written as a showpiece for the Lunts and Coward himself, and based on a situation which is difficult to believe even if one concentrates on the homosexual overtones. Conceived as a hymn of praise for the menage a trois, Design for Living asks us first to understand that artistic and creative people like Leo and Otto, one a playwright, the other a painter, should be allowed greater moral latitude than ordinary mortals, who in any case are bound to be dull, conventional and lacking in both taste and talent. It is a snobbish outlook which on occasion is enough to make one grit one’s teeth in annoyance, and it is only partly redeemed by Coward’s witty bits, tossed in like currants in a cake.

For those prepared to accept this elitist state of affairs, Alan Strachan’s production very neatly captures the period with the assistance of Finlay James’ settings which progress from Parisian impoverished, through Mayfair traditional to Manhattan high camp. Maria Aitken, that most eminently watchable of actresses, a sublimely elegant beanpole dressed by Yuki, comes out of it best as she is hurled emotionally from one lover to another, settling for the kind, understanding Ernest (a nice performance from Roland Curram) and then unaccountably going back to the overgrown schoolboys. Ian Ogilvy and Gary Bond play Leo and Otto, with perhaps more savoire faire than conviction, but on the whole my sympathies lay with Julia McCarthy’s sniffily disapproving Miss Hodge.