Review – The Constant Wife, Royal Shakespeare Company at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, 1st July 2025

Posted on July 2, 2025 by therealchrisparkle

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!

Review – The Circle, Festival Theatre, Chichester, 1st February 2024

Posted on February 5, 2024 by therealchrisparkle

It was 47 years ago that I saw a production of The Circle at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket. I remember thinking at the time that it was a rather stately old play, not very relevant to the theatregoing public of the time and very old-fashioned for a 16-year-old know-all like me. Surely, in 2024, 103 years after its first performance, isn’t it a play that should be consigned to the archives?

In brief, absolutely not. This is a smart, intelligent, beautifully written and constructed play, packed full of insights, with three superb roles in which older actors can revel and another three challenging younger roles that give the actors a great opportunity to stick their teeth into. It’s no surprise that productions of this play have always attracted top quality casts. The original 1921 production boasted Victorian comedy legend LottieVenne as Kitty and Fay Compton as Elizabeth; a 1931 revival starred Athene Seyler as Kitty and a young Celia Johnson as Elizabeth, whilst a further revival in 1945 starred Yvonne Arnaud as Kitty and a youngish John Gielgud as Arnold. Even the production I remember from my younger days starred Googie Withers as Kitty, Bill Fraser as Porteous, Susan Hampshire as Elizabeth and Martin Jarvis as Arnold.

Here’s the set up: thirty years ago, the seemingly happy Lady Kitty Champion-Cheney left her husband Clive and five-year-old son Arnold to run off with the up-and-coming politician Lord Hughie Porteous. Since then, Clive and Kitty have never seen each other. However, Arnold’s wife Elizabeth is so curious to meet her mother-in-law that she invites Kitty and Hughie to their house – and Clive has unexpectedly turned up too. Will they let bygones be bygones or will the sparks fly? And might the experience of the older generation have an unforeseen influence on the younger generation? I’m not going to tell you – you’ll have to see the play for yourself; mind you, it’s been around since 1921 – where on earth have you been?

Somerset Maugham fits perfectly in the middle of the sequence of great English/Irish dramatists that started with Wilde and Shaw and went on to produce Coward and Rattigan. And whilst The Circle doesn’t quite sparkle with the same effervescent wit of say, Importance of Being Earnest or Private Lives, it truly holds its own in comparison to all those authors’ more thoughtful and searching comedies. And it’s a story as old as time how a family muddles through marriage separation, changes of partners and that familiar mantra of do as I say, don’t do as I do. Each of the main characters is given equal weight to express how they feel about the situation they face, and there are several excellent speeches and thought-provoking themes that linger on in the mind, long after curtain down.

The play has been elegantly adapted from its original cast of nine to a snappier seven, without disrupting any flow of language, plot or conversation. In fact, it’s an undoubted pleasure to see a play set in 1920 performed exactly as it would have been originally staged, with no attempt of modernisation. And whilst today we might smile a little indulgently at the “scandalous” social situation it presents with the benefit of a hundred years’ hindsight, when it was first produced it would have felt rippingly contemporary. Kitty left Clive thirty years earlier than when the play is set, so that would have been around 1890. Just imagine how shocked Queen Victoria would have been!

Louie Whitemore’s set is the epitome of simplicity, concentrating on the minimum requirement to suggest chez Champion-Cheney; some French Windows, and a few tables and chairs, one of which is almost certainly not a Sheraton. There’s terrific attention to detail with her costume design too, with Lady Kitty bedecked in haute couture, traditional British reserve for Clive and Hughie, and spiffing tennis flannels for Teddie.

Jane Asher is perfectly cast as Lady Kitty – a petite, diminutive presence on stage but with a vivid personality that bursts out from beneath that elegant exterior. You can just imagine the brash determined younger woman who left Clive for Hughie, running roughshod over all society’s accepted norms of the time; and she conveys that spirit of independence balanced with the wisdom of experience beautifully. Nicholas le Prevost captures the once-roguish charm of Porteous that has been shrunk by years of disappointment and bitterness and gives us a splendid portrayal of grumpy self-centredness and domestic resentment.Pete Ashmore encapsulates Arnold’s passionless prissiness with a well observed coolness and barely concealed anger. Olivia Vinall’s Elizabeth is an excellent study of someone trapped in a loveless marriage but with the curiosity to attempt to do something about it, and Daniel Burke’s Teddie comes across as a decent enough chap, with the sense to know that nothing’s perfect, but he’s happy to settle for that.

But it’s Clive Francis who steals every scene as the mischievous Clive Champion-Cheney, hovering with gentle menace over the card table, making extraordinary suggestions feel reasonable, manipulating everyone with the intent of achieving his own aims. His comic delivery is immaculate, his timing impeccable, and the twinkle in his eye irresistible. Together the cast form a superb ensemble and Tom Littler’s production is a winner from start to finish. Will The Circle still be performed in another fifty years’ time? I rather think it might. After it leaves Chichester, the show continues its tour to Oxford, Malvern and Richmond.

P. S. The Circle has literally come full circle for Clive Francis, who played Teddie in the 1977 production!

Five Alive, Let Theatre Thrive!

Review – For Services Rendered, Minerva Theatre, Chichester, 29th August 2015

Posted on September 1, 2015 by therealchrisparkle

First Chichester weekend of the year, and a joint visit with our friends Lord Liverpool and the Countess of Cockfosters. The last time we saw them was for a show in Edinburgh, and it poured with rain. This time, in Chichester, it poured with rain again. We’re seeing them next weekend in Stratford. I don’t have much in the way of climactic expectations!

After a really superb lunch in the Minerva Brasserie (why would you go anywhere else pre-theatre in Chichester?) we took our seats in the Minerva Theatre for For Services Rendered. Described as a rarely performed play nowadays, I did get to see it at the National in 1979 – on September 14th, in fact, in seat G14 in the Stalls, priced £5.95. I remember it being a stunning production, featuring such stalwarts of the stage as Jean Anderson, Alison Fiske, Peter Jeffrey, Harold Innocent, Barbara Ferris and Phyllida Law. Of course the original production starred Flora Robson and Ralph Richardson – I bet that had the wow factor. But there’s no doubt that this new production at Chichester is, I’m sure, as fine as any in the past. Superb attention to period detail, a deep, beautiful, atmospheric set, and cut-glass acting as good as you’ll get anywhere.

Written in 1932, this was Somerset Maugham’s last-but-one play, an examination of the fallout of World War One within a well-to-do English family. Fourteen years on, the Ardsleys are still just about surviving, with the oldest son and heir blinded in the war, and therefore unable to carry on the family business; one daughter having lost the man she’d hoped to marry; another having married outside her class (disgraceful) to a tenant farmer; and the third unmarried at 27 with no hope of finding a suitable gentleman in the backwater in which they live.In addition, there is the hard-up ex-officer Collie Stratton, who opened a motor repair business that has fallen on its face, and a married couple with no apparent love for each other, but with the husband eager to seduce the Ardsleys’ youngest daughter. All that, and the doctor brother of the lady of the house has concerns about her health… Maugham weaves these threads together culminating in various degrees of tragedy, although there is one glimmer of happiness for a couple of the characters somewhere there – but on reflection, it’s unlikely to end well.

Whilst this may be a play from several eras ago, and you may feel that the drawing-room, middle class setting is anachronistic in the post- Look Back in Anger age, there is much to admire and appreciate about this play. Staging it today shows how the general emancipation of women has come a long way; back in 1932 it just wasn’t done for women to make their own decisions about – well, anything really. Marrying outside of one’s class is shown to be a foolish venture, inevitably ending in disappointment; that is perhaps the one element in which this play has a dated feel. Apart from that, much that was relevant then is relevant today.Coping with social shame and scandal can still result in suicide. Lives and relationships can still be ruined in the aftermath of war. As a nation, we still don’t look after our war veterans as we should; many of them still rely on drink or drugs as a prop on which some of them just about get by. Recessions and depressions affect our livelihoods and incomes; but there will always be those who have inordinately inappropriate sums of money at their fingertips, to keep for their own pleasure and fun without a thought for the wider community. If For Services Rendered had been written by Noel Coward, we might have expected a wittier touch or maybe a happier ending; but Maugham liked his gloom, and, despite a few ironically humorous scenes, the tone and vision remain bleak throughout – but appropriately so.

Howard Davies’ classy production thrills you from the moment you enter the auditorium and are greeted by William Dudley’s elegant, tasteful set; in fact it was all I could do to deter Lord Liverpool from jumping on stage, lolling on one of the dining chairs, feet up on the table, feigning 1930s ennui with a tennis racquet in one hand and The Times in the other. The whole production oozes dignified restraint, from the rarely played wireless in the corner to the well-worn but once hideously expensive eastern carpets. Only the pantomime-like clap of thunder that heralds in the second act strikes an over the top note; I half-expected Mr Ardsley to burst out of a stylised bottle, bestowing three surprise wishes upon the impoverished Collie.

Stella Gonet’s Mrs Ardsley is a strong matriarch, who knows precisely how to behave decently and will never stoop to depths unbecoming of a lady. Her altercation (such as it is) with youngest daughter Lois is a fine exercise in strict discretion, packing her off to spend months with a miserable aunt before she even has a chance to fiddle with her pearls. It’s a beautiful performance, blending practicality with decorum, and when her character has her own tragedy to contend with, she gives us a classic stiff-upper-lip experience that you can only admireand hope you’d be like that in the same circumstances. As her husband, Simon Chandler is a little nugget of Victorian conservatism, decent but unbending, intelligent but without empathy; a walking, talking, emotional void who follows rules to the nth degree. Much of the ironic humour comes from his total inability to see the wood for the trees.

Anthony Calf is excellent as always as the abysmal Wilfred Cedar, exuding friendship and bonhomie when it suits him, retreating into hostile selfishness when challenged. He very credibly gives the impression of someone falling in love with love, and there’s a huge element of the pathetic about his approaches to young Lois. Matilda Ziegler’s Gwen is a brilliant creation of a woman under pressure to keep her man, mixing sarcasm and ridicule with sheer venom. I also loved her opening scene where every comment she made could be taken as an insult – it was immaculately performed. There’s also a brilliant performance by Justine Mitchell as Eva, who’s sacrificed her own emotions to do the decent thing by blinded brother Sydney, but who just can’t take any more of that wretched chess.Her scene with Joseph Kloska, as the persistently irritated and irritating Sydney, where he’s criticising her on her chess moves, is electric. But it is Ms Mitchell’s semi-coquettish approaches to Nick Fletcher’s Collie, sending as strong a signal as is decently possible to suggest that, like Barkis, she is willing, that constitutes the stand-out performance of this play. She positively hurts with pointless optimism, as she tries to lend him money or suggest they would make a good couple together; but Eva is the character to whom Somerset Maugham most wants to deny happiness, and her increasing mental instability is movingly and convincingly played.

Jo Herbert is excellent as the put-upon but stoic Ethel, Sam Callis also very good as the rough and ready farmer Howard with potentially straying hands. Yolanda Kettle is very convincing as the frustrated, teasing and not entirely demure Lois, and David Annen turns in a very nice performance as the doctor/brother, incapable of persuading his patient to do the right thing, and, when it comes to the crunch, resigned to (as he sees it) failure.

A rewarding, thoughtful, and thoroughly traditional revival which kept everyone on the edge of their seats and really satisfied its audience. We all came out heaping praise on the performers and the production. If you’re not au fait with between-the-wars British drama this is a perfect opportunity to see how stiff those upper lips could be. Highly recommended.