June 17, 1984

As one character says to the woman he has just seduced and been seduced by, who happens to be his closest friend's roommate and lover, ''The actual facts are so simple. 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!'' And so Noel Coward did, spinning out a characteristically brittle and breezy confection of wit among the privileged and neurotic in ''Design for Living.'' The play, which he wrote for himself and Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, opened on Broadway in 1933. Brooks Atkinson of The New York Times noted that its subject matter could be termed ''decadent,'' but the play was well received in New York, although its English debut was delayed until 1939 because of the Lord Chamberlain's objections. The menage a trois that shocked and titillated in 1933 might scarcely raise an eyebrow in these jaded times. But despite the passage of half a century and a resurgence of interest in the late Sir Noel and his works, ''Design for Living'' has never been revived on Broadway - until now. On Wednesday, the play will open at the Circle in the Square, starring Jill Clayburgh, Raul Julia and Frank Langella. George C. Scott is directing the production.

THE KENNEDYS An American Drama. By Peter Collier and David Horowitz. Illustrated. 576 pp. New York: Summit Books. $20.95. By Ted Morgan STRIP the paint and you get down to the wood at the risk of finding the wood wormy, which is what Peter Collier and David Horowitz have done by stripping the layers of myth from the Kennedy family history. Mr. Collier and Mr. Horowitz, the authors of an excellent book on the Rockefellers, have done this by circumventing ''the Kennedy Damage Control Department,'' which sponsors a literature of apology by courting friendly authors into writing congenial versions of the tale. One is reminded of Piero della Francesca's commissioned portrait of the Duke of Montefeltro. It was painted in profile because the duke was blind in one eye. ''The Kennedys'' is a full-face family portrait based on a phenomenal amount of freshly harvested research that its subjects will not find flattering. It is a portrait of four generations, with the feel of lives progressing through historical time that one finds in such multigenerational novels as ''The Forsyte

In the beginning, maybe eight years ago, the new David Rabe work for theater was a thin sheaf of notes filed under the heading of ''the guys' play.'' It was born, probably, out of his first brief chaotic stay in Hollywood, but Mr. Rabe is skittish about stressing the connections. From time to time, a striking piece of dialogue would swim into his head, to be noted and dropped into the folder which, even so, hardly grew. Then, in 1982, two events altered his life: His daughter was born and his best friend died. Without quite understanding why writing the play had become so urgent, he sat down to the typewriter early last year and in a couple of months, record time for a famously slow worker, had a draft of what has become ''Hurlyburly.''

The State Department has asked New York City to bar Libyan diplomats from occupying that nation's nearly completed 23-story East Side headquarters, pending clarification by the Government of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi on how the building will be used. Repeated requests for information from the Libyans on the use of their $20 million tower at 309 East 48th Street, near United Nations Plaza, have gone unanswered, a State Department spokesman said yesterday. The State Department requests have come amid mounting concern in Washington over state-sponsored terrorist activities. Until the Libyans provide a satisfactory response, the spokesman said, the State Department has asked the city to withhold a certificate of occupancy for the building, Libya House, which has been under construction since 1980 and is scheduled to be finished next month.

RONALD PARENTEAU says that when he tells people he lives in Georgetown, it starts all kinds of conversations because he has to explain that it is not really one town, but a community that includes parts of four towns. ''I kind of like saying I live in Georgetown,'' said Mr. Parenteau, a resident for 25 years. The community with a claim on Mr. Parenteau's affection has a fire district, a telephone exchange and a ZIP code. What it will not have after the end of September is the post office in Gianvincenzo Marsili's building on Old Mill Road. Mr. Marsili told the Postal Service about three months ago that he would not renew the lease. According to the Postal Service, it is looking for another place for a post office, but the 489 residences and businesses getting mail delivered from the Georgetown post office will have to change their addresses or pick up their mail themselves.