First Folio founder chooses Noel Coward comedy

Alison Vesely, director of Noel Coward's 1932 comedy "Design for Living" at the First Folio Theatre in Oak Brook, has had her own design for living for the past decade and a half.

First Folio, which Vesely founded 13 years ago, began by producing Shakespeare outdoors during the summer at the Mayslake Peabody Estate Forest Preserve in Oak Brook. But it was Vesely's plan to turn First Folio into a year-around theater.

"It was always part of our vision," Vesely says.

First, though, the abandoned 30-room mansion on the estate, which had in the past been used as a school and as a retreat, had to be renovated. That took more time than anticipated.

But in 2003-2004, after nearly a decade of earning high marks for outdoor productions under the stars on a stage in a gorgeous meadow, First Folio finally staged an indoor production.

"We did a series of staged readings in the library in the mansion," Vesely says. One reading, of Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest," was so successful, Vesely revived it a year later, in 2005, as a full production.

The language-rich play was ideal for a simple performing space; all you needed were actors with good pipes to make the play really rip. The success of that production allowed Vesely to fulfill her dream of producing year-around.

Coward's "Design for Living" is another language-rich play, like "The Importance of Being Earnest," that lends itself to a simple production. Coward is very much an actor's playwright. He loves language and loves creating the kind of complex, comic characters that actors love to sink their teeth into and audiences love to see on the stage.

"It's a much more complex play than it appears on the surface," Vesely says. The play concerns three close friends living the glamorous life. But beneath all their elegance and their brittle wit, as we learn over the course of the play, lurks unsuspected vulnerability and heartache.

"We have spent a lot of time in rehearsals talking about the characters and what happens to them in the play," Vesely says. "It's a fascinating play, very modern in its point of view."

The play was considered scandalous in its time because of its daring attitudes about sex and lifestyle choices.

"In some places they are still considered scandalous - the idea that you have to find your own design for living," Vesely says.

"Design for Living" runs through March 1 at First Folio Theatre at the Mayslake Peabody Estate Forest Preserve, 31st Street near Route 83, Oak Brook, IL. (630) 986-8067 or firstfolio.org.