Williamstown Theatre Festival

Williamstown Theatre Festival is the best-known of the Berkshires' theaters, thanks to its star-studded casting. To wit: Marisa Tomei, Campbell Scott and Steven Weber in Design for Living, playing through Aug. 8 on WTF's mainstage.

Though frequently produced, this Noel Coward comedy has by now become a museum piece: three hours of banter just to make a (veiled) entreaty for acceptance of homosexuality and women's sexual liberation—provocative in 1933, not so much in 2004. Williamstown's production could also be labeled a "museum piece" because of the supreme artistry of its sets, one for each of the three acts. A scruffy, crowded atelier in Paris and fashionable apartments in London and New York have been stunningly conceived and elaborately accessorized by Hugh Landwehr (whose last project was, ironically, the bare-staged Frozen on Broadway). Tomei, Scott and Weber enact the lovers' roundelay with panache if not the steadiest English accents; Weber works the hardest to make a role his own, and it pays off with the funniest, most indelible performance in the show. Tomei has some swoonworthy smooches with both Scott and Weber, but the two men are the pair with the best chemistry (probably what Coward intended).

Together, Scott and Weber ham it up and seem to be enjoying themselves more than they do with Tomei. There's also a fine supporting turn from Jack Gilpin as Tomei's put-upon spouse and comic mugging by Kristine Nielsen, whose frumpy maid is a drastic change from the elegant hostess she portrayed last fall in Omnium Gatherum off-Broadway. Design for Living's three-scene Act 2 and two-scene Act 3 make for a long night of theater, but the set and costume designers keep you dazzled during all the chatter. www.wtfestival.org

Sightseeing tip... This college town is also a must for art lovers, as its Clark Art Institute is one of the country's superb small museums. This private collection of Sterling and Francine Clark (heirs to the Singer sewing machine fortune) features all major schools of European art since 1400 as well as such American artists as Winslow Homer, Mary Cassatt and John Singer Sargent. All the giants of Impressionism are represented in a collection that includes several Renoir paintings and one of Degas' "Little Dancer" sculptures. A special exhibit, through Sept. 6, comes courtesy of the Clark's participation in a French-American museum partnership—"Bonjour, Monsieur Courbet!": The Bruyas Collection From the Musée Fabre, Montpellier, showcases such 19th-century French masters as Courbet, Delacroix, Millet, Corot and Rousseau. And leave time for an amble on the woodland trails adjacent to the Clark. www.clarkart.edu

Photo of Weber, Tomei and Scott by Richard Feldman.