Anybody who has seen Design For Living realises that all is not as it seems to be on the surface, and the ménage à trois  between Gilda, Leo and Otto has an undercurrent of homosexuality running through it. Presumably the very artificiality of the relationships was what got it through the Lord Chamberlain’s department in 1933, the trio being bright young things whose zest for life and unconventionality overrode the sexual aspects. The strange thing about Sean Mathias’ upfront production, in which Leo and Otto are unashamedly bisexual, consoling each other after Gilda’s departure in the most physical of fashions, is that it does not make the play more believable. In most respects it is as artificial as ever, Stephen Brimson Lewis’ designs, which suggest the three locations by cut-out models of buildings adding to the unreality.

There is no disputing that it is a deeply unpleasant play, not so much because of the assorted sexual shenanigans but because of the sheer arrogance and uncaring dispositions of the three main characters. All three ride roughshod over people’s feelings as well as life’s conventions, the main victim being Ernest (Nicholas Clay), the man who hasn’t got a personality, according to Otto, but “a very little one” in Gilda’s eyes. For all his lack of colour, Ernest is hard-working, upright and devoted to Gilda, yet she and her male companions cruelly humiliate him before riding off into their amoral sunset. Being Coward there are plenty of laugh lines but usually of a peculiarly snobbish variety, and one has he feeling that the late author himself would not have altogether approved of this treatment. He would however have admired the performances of Rachel Weisz as the hard-boiled and preening sexpot Gilda, Paul Rhys as the languid and calculating Leo and Clive Owen, who cleverly suggests Otto’s rather lower social status which he discards in favour of semi-stately queenliness.