Word: gildas
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...most undergraduates at elite Smith College in Northampton, Mass., the road to one of the Seven Sisters has been smooth and untroubled. Despite the considerable work load there is always the comfortable feeling that the $8,430-a-year tuition bill will be met. But Gilda Palano is different. For a start, she is 48, and when she graduates next year with a B.A. in anthropology and sociology she will have overcome more obstacles than most of the young women around her will face in a lifetime...
Among the other players, Catherine Colinvaux as an "idiot" successfully steals the show without uttering a line. Her wide-eyed vacant expressions and spastic contortions, reminiscent of Gilda Radner's depiction of a mentally disturbed child on the defunct "old" Saturday Night Live, graciously upstage the sorry plot unfolding around...
Design for Living is the story of three young "artistic souls" and their precocious attempts at worldliness. The settings of the three scenes correspond to stages in the heroine Gilda's conquest of the world through the men who surround her. (One is forced to be forgiving of plays written in the thirties.) In the first, Gilda leaves the Parisian garret of the artist Otto to run off with his best friend, the playwright Leo. The second act takes place in Leo's "comfy" London townhouse, when the newly successful Otto comes to reclaim her. Gilda dumps both...
...PAPER, the play is truly amusing. The soul-searching and success-seeking of the three main characters would fit in well at any number of dorms in the Yard. The scene in which Leo and Otto, after Gilda's departure, set about getting drunk with refreshing and hysterical earnestness is particularly reminiscent of freshman year. But all three are nonetheless shallow and inherently unpleasant. Unfortunately, the Huntington's production lacks the finesse that would make these sophmoric characters captivating at the same time...
...actors seem to be plumbing their characters for a substance and realism which never was intended and never can be found. As a consequence, they neglect to polish and refine the little details which would have given a rarefied touch to Coward's flight of fancy. Katherine Ferrance as Gilda is appropriately sleek, but one cannot believe that a character who doesn't know what to do with her own arms and legs can skillfully manipulate other people. Richard Council as the painter Otto is a bit too heavy and straightforward, he says witty things, but his tone and presence...