Lisa Dillon to Lead Coward's DESIGN FOR LIVING at Old Vic the Fall

Baz Bamigboye reports in the UK Daily Mail today that Lisa Dillon will lead a production of Noel Coward's Design for Living at the Old Vic in September.  In this season launch production, she will be joined onstage by Tom Burke and AnDrew Scott. Anthony Page will direct the production, which is being produced by Kate Pakenham.

Pakenham tells Bamigboye of the cast chemistry: "‘They were perfect together, and it all made sense later because it turns out they knew each other at RaDa.'"

To read the full report in the UK Daily Mail, click here.

Design for Living centers on a trio of artistic characters, Gilda (Dillon), Otto (Burke) and Leo (Scott), and their complicated three-way relationship. Originally written to star Lynn Fontanne, Alfred Lunt and Coward, it was premiered on Broadway, partly because its risqué subject matter was thought unacceptable to the official censor in London. It was not until 1939 that a London production was presented.

Design for Living was a success on Broadway in 1933, but it has been revived less often than Coward's other major comedies. Coward has said of the piece, "it was liked and disliked, and hated and admired, but never, I think, sufficiently loved by any but its three leading actors." The play was adapted into a film in 1933, directed by Ernst Lubitsch, with a screenplay by Ben Hecht, and starring Fredric March, Gary Cooper, and Miriam Hopkins. It first played in London in 1939 and has enjoyed a number of stage revivals.

Dillion, best known for her role as 'Mary Smith' on the television show Cranford, has appeared on stage in The Master Builder by Henrik Ibsen at the Albery Theatre, (now the Noël Coward Theatre) in London, Othello with the RSC at the Trafalgar Studios, London, before embarking on an international tour, Ibsen's Hedda Gabler at The Almeida Theatre, London, later transferring to the Duke of York's Theatre in London), Period of Adjustment at The Swan Theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon later transferring to The Almeida Theatre, London, As You Like It at the Crucible and the RSC complete works festival,The Cherry Orchard, the National Theatre's revival of Noël Coward's Present Laughter, and The Hour We Knew Nothing Of Each Other. She also appeared in Anna Mackmin's 2008 West End revival of Under the Blue Sky by David Eldridge. In 2009 Dillon will star in When the Rain Stops Falling at the Almeida. Additional television credits include Cambridge Spies and Hawking.  On the big screen she appeared in Bright Young Things.

For updates on the project, visit www.oldvictheatre.com.

 

 

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