Are we seeing a resurgence in the influence of Somerset Maugham? After Theatre Royal Bath’s blissful revival of The Circle last year, now comes Laura Wade’s invigorating version of The Constant Wife, his 1926 sparkler about infidelity and how to handle it. Give me a revival of the 1976 musical Liza of Lambeth next and I’ll be very happy. Maugham’s original play tells the story of the relationship between John, a Harley Street doctor married to Constance, and Marie-Louise, a spoilt and vacuous pretty little thing, married to Mortimer. Both Constance’s mother and sister are fully aware of the affair and differ as to whether she should be told about it. But Constance has known about it all along and has been biding her time to work it to her best advantage.
Where Maugham tells the story as a simple, linear narrative, Laura Wade’s deft re-ordering puts the affair out in the open right from the start and then goes back in time so that we can see how Constance discovered the affair a year earlier. There’s nothing Laura Wade likes more than to play with time as she did very effectively in both The Watsons and Home I’m Darling – and The Constant Wife is no exception. Both HID and TCW feature a strong central female backed by a purposefully resilient mother, but where Judy in HID revels in the lifestyle of a meek 50s housewife, much to her mother’s consternation, Constance embodies feminism by knowing precisely what she wants and how to get it, while her mother is the type who feels that if a man plays away from home it’s entirely the woman’s fault. One of the best lines of the play is when Constance tells her mother why she always knew that Bernard wasn’t the man for her: “he was a trifle too much inclined to lie down on the floor and let me walk over him”. It’s a line that gives you an instant insight into her character.
They say that knowledge is power; by concealing the fact that she knew about the affair, Constance starts to create a new financially independent life for herself hidden in plain sight. If this were an episode of The Traitors it would be like winning a shield and not telling anyone. However, neither Maugham’s Constance nor Wade’s updated version ever puts a foot out of character, retaining her dignity and total faithfulness to her class and her status. Indeed, the whole production’s adherence to its original 1920s setting and atmosphere is one of its greatest virtues; the occasional – and extremely funny – double entendre notwithstanding.
My only quibble here is that Jamie Cullum’s jazz-oriented incidental music, whilst doubtless of the age, feels a little out of balance with the rest of the production. There’s no sense of the Jazz Age in the text or the characterisations – Marie-Louise could easily have been portrayed as a flapper but she decidedly isn’t – so the music didn’t work for me. That aside, the other creative aspects are excellent. Ryan Day’s subtle lighting suggests the world outside the Harley Street drawing room, Anna Fleischle and Cat Fuller’s costumes reflect the characterisations perfectly; even the fabrics and objets d’art that Martha sells in her shop are spot-on – that “lovely” lamp is hideous by the way, but that’s all part of the fun.
As well as reshaping the sequences of the plotline, Laura Wade’s script takes all the best Maugham scenes and many of his brilliant killer lines and smartly updates the scenario with the removal of an unnecessary character (Barbara), enhancement of the character of Bentley, the butler, and some lovely meta moments, currently very en vogue. I particularly liked the whole notion of the play that Constance and Bernard are going to see and how sometimes you need a refresher after the interval. Tamara Harvey’s direction is clear and delightfully lacking in gimmickry, although there were a few scenes where our view from Row F of the Ground (stalls) was blocked – four actors positioned in a diagonal line across the stage so that only the nearest could be seen; I know from ecstatic laughter around me that we missed some obvious gems of physical comedy, which is a shame.
The cast are uniformly superb, each giving terrific performances. Raj Bajaj is brilliant as Bernard, perpetually uncomfortable with himself and on the brink of exploding with love for Constance. Amy Morgan brings out all the comedy of sibling exasperation as sister Martha, and Luke Norris as John gives an intelligent portrayal of a husband caught out but not prepared to take all the blame. Emma McDonald’s Marie-Louise wheedles her way out of an awkward situation beautifully, cleverly showing us how unclever her character really is.
Kate Burton is pitch-perfect as Mrs Culver, Constance’s mother, delivering her fantastic lines with knowing authority and impish fun; and there’s great support from Daniel Millar’s perplexed and easily fooled Mortimer and Mark Meadows as the super-reliable Bentley. But it is Rose Leslie who takes centre stage throughout with a thoroughly believable, smart and witty portrayal of Constance, handling all her inner circle with various degrees of manipulativeness, apart from her only truly honest relationship, with Bentley, 
where she can completely be herself.
An excellent production of a timeless play, brought smartly to life by a neat adaptation. Don’t underestimate Maugham – he’s better than you think he is.
Production photos by Johan Persson
Four They’re Jolly Good Fellows!