summer games; A celebrity menage a trois heats up Williamstown's sizzling stage.

Byline: Adam Green

To most people, the phrase summer stock evokes images of I-thought-she-was-dead B-movie queens stumbling through barn-theater productions of Mame and graying soap-opera lotharios sleepwalking through desultory performances of Deathtrap. But the Williamstown Theatre Festival, which is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary at its home in the Massachusetts Berkshires, has always gone its own perverse way, presenting a parade of fine actors in sterling productions of serious works: Christopher Walken, Blythe Danner, and Gwyneth Paltrow in The Seagull; Joanne Woodward, Karen Allen, and John Sayles in The Glass Menagerie.

Leading off the final month of Williamstown's anniversary season is Gregory Boyd's production of Noel Coward's gorgeously provocative 1933 comedy Design for Living (through August 8). Marisa Tomei, Campbell Scott, and Steven Weber play Gilda, Leo, and Otto-sophisticated, if romantically confused, bohemians unable to figure out who belongs with whom. As Leo tells Gilda, "I love you. You love me. You love Otto. I love Otto. Otto loves you. Otto loves me. There now! Start to unravel from there." After much erotic hopscotch, dramatic angst, and sparkling dialogue, they arrive at a novel solution: They'll set up house and live together a trois.

"I love that we get to thumb our noses at the conventions of society-especially in the conservative climate we live in these days," Tomei says.

The actress calls Coward a "revolutionary spirit," though critics have sometimes labeled his work "thin." ("I shall ...