Peter Viney's Blog

Originating Playwright W. Somerset Maugham
Writer Laura Wade

Directed by Tamara Harvey
Set & costume Anna Fleischle
Composer Jamie Cullum

Royal Shakespeare Company
The Swan Theatre
Stratford-upon-Avon
Wednesday 23rd July 2025, 19.30

CAST
Rose Leslie – Constance Middleton
Luke Norris- John Middleton
Raj Bajaj – Bernard Kersal
Kate Burton – Mrs Culver
Emma McDonald- Marie-Louise Durham
Mark Meadows – Bentley
Daniel Millar – Mortimer Durham
Amy Morgan – Martha Culver

For more on the original play, see:
The Constant Wife by W. Somerset Maugham, Salisbury Playhouse, 2011

This is a surprise. The RSC strenuously avoids plays from the ‘proscenium stage with windows / French windows at the back’ era. They did Oscar Wilde’s Salomé in 2017, but that’s not a drawing room piece. Then it’s directed by co-artistic director Tamara Harvey. Note the credits. Somerset Maugham is relegated to ‘Originating playwright’ and Laura Wade is listed simply as ‘Writer.’ Or on the fliers ‘By Laura Wade. Based on the play by W. Somerset Maugham.’ Laura Wade wrote and Tamara Harvey directed Home, I’m Darling at the National Theatre.

The set and costume by Anna Fleischle will contend strongly for best of the year. I wondered how they would fit a proscenium arch stage drawing room set on a thrust stage, but they do, and have one entrance instead of Maugham’s two, but characters can and do also come and go on the angled walkways to the thrust stage.

The set has transparent sections so we see people coming up stairs to the room, or going up to the next floor. They are then in profile black shapes. More, Constance takes a job as an interior designer with her sister so that ‘now’ is a beautiful 1920s room, but stage sections revolve show that one year earlier the same room was more conservative. Lighting design matches it. The costumes are hyper 1920s, a fantastic gorgeous version of high 1926 styles. The women shimmer with colour. It is an extremely good to look at production.

Briefly. The play is set in the Harley Street drawing room of John Middleton, a surgeon, and his wife Constance. They have been married for fifteen years. John is having an affair with Constance’s friend, Marie-Louise Durham. It’s been going on for a year.

Emma McDonald as Marie-Louise, Luke Norris as John

Constance’s sister, Martha, wants to tell her about the affair. Her mother, Mrs Culver, does not.

Rose Leslie as Constance, Raj Bajaj as Bernard

An admirer from her distant past, Bernard, has arrived from Japan, and escorts Constance around London to shops and theatres, conveniently for John. It gives him time to conduct his affair with Marie-Louise. Bernard has been in Japan working since Constance rejected his proposal before she married John instead. He still carries a torch for her.

Marie-Louise’s older husband, Mortimer Durham, realises the affair when he discovers John’s cigarette case in their bedroom. He storms in to confront them. Constance to everyone’s surprise weaves a tale about leaving it there herself, and gets John and Marie-Louise off the hook, and reveals she has known all along. Constance takes a job as an interior designer and becomes financially independent, a key issue in the play. She pays John for her ‘board and lodging’ for a year and sets off for Italy with Bernard for a six week holiday ‘as man and wife’ before Bernard returns to Japan. Will John take her back?

Laura Wade said she didn’t know the play at all when she was asked to adapt it. The changes are radical at top level. There is an entire flashback scene, set one year earlier, where Constance discovers that her surgeon husband, John, is having the affair with her best friend, Marie Louise. She sees them at it, and steamily too, but they don’t see her, or know that she knows. None of that is in Maugham.

In the programme Laura Wade writes:
Maugham’s original play is so fecund and feminist and rich already, so we’ve just slightly polished up those aspects of it for modern audiences. We’ve tried to do it subtly – it shouldn’t be a game where you’re trying to work out which bits are mine and which bits are Maugham’s. I’ve just tried to make it more of itself.

There are changes at the detail level, most obvious even if you just flick the play texts and look at the print. Wade is more dynamic, interactive and dialogue based. Maugham has longer speeches where everyone else has to listen. Then minor characters go, but Bentley, the butler, becomes a larger character. Barbara, Constance’s interior design partner goes, but her interior design role goes to the sister, Martha instead. That enhances Martha’s character.

Wade adds a number of theatrical in-jokes, so the play Constance is going to see with Bernard is The Constant Wife, and they fear they may miss act one. At the start of act two, they discuss their attempt to see the play and say casually that having missed act one, everyone needs a recap after an interval, so perhaps it has one, and Martha, her sister, gives a long funny one of this play. Overall, it is funnier.

The playwrights of the wider era, Wilde, Maugham, Rattigan and Coward wrote of heterosexual marital infidelity partly as a smokescreen for their personal theme which was homosexual infidelity. Here, Bentley tells Constance that his secret affair is with a man. Maugham could not have put that in a play in 1926.

I thought Laura Wade’s version dilutes the ending. Constance tells her mother she isn’t really going with Bernard. Is she telling the truth? Probably not. We don’t know, but it puts a veil of enigma over the clarity of the original ending (which I prefer).

Casting is spot on throughout. Rose Leslie is Constance, a gorgeously dressed confident and assertive Constance too. No self pity there.

Luke Norris is a delightfully baffled John.

Emma McDonald as Marie-Louise

Emma McDonald is a beautiful Marie-Louise. We have seen her four times in lead roles at The Watermill, and it is good to see her major talent on a larger stage. Marie-Louise is not too bright and self-centred with it. The scene where she goes on her knees to apologise to Constance is superb. She will dump John for a younger man in the end.

Raj Bajaj has done a series of major RSC roles, in which he perfected his ‘innocent abroad’ look as Bernard. I suspect he lost more lines from the original text than others, but his reactive acting as he watches the progress fills in for them.

Kate Burton as Mrs Culver, and Amy Morgan as the sister, Martha, are a double act. Mrs Culver believes women should overlook male infidelity as she had to. Martha is a successful single career woman with opposite views.

Daniel Millar is the cuckolded older husband, a businessman, very wealthy but not ‘one of their class.’

Mark Meadows as Bentley has the most enhanced role, escorting people on and off, playing the piano (I won’t spoil a joke), become confidante to Constance.

It’s an easy four star. Performances, set, costume, lighting, stage direction are all worthy of a five. We both enjoyed it greatly. I don’t think they were totally able to eradicate every last trace of Maugham’s stiffness, but the themes still work. Four plus?

**** +

WHAT THE CRITICS SAID

LINKS ON THIS BLOG
four star
Chris Weigand, The Guardian ****
Dve Fargnoli, The Stage ****
Sarah Crompton, What’s On Stage ****
Raphael Kohn, All That Dazzles ****

LAURA WADE
The Watsons, Chichester, 2018
Home, I’m Darling, National Theatre 2018
POSH, Salisbury Playhouse 2015

W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
The Circle, by W. Somerset Maugham Chichester 2024
The Constant Wife by W. Somerset Maugham, Salisbury Playhouse, 2011
For Services Rendered, by W. Somerset Maugham, Chichester Minerva Theatre, 2015
also
Before The Party by Rodney Ackland, based on Maugham’s short story, Salisbury 2017

TAMARA HARVEY (Director)
Pericles, Prince of Tyre – RSC 2024
Home, I’m Darling, National Theatre 2018
The Famous Five: A New Musical, Chichester 2022

ROSE LESLIE
Death on The Nile 2022 (film)
(Also Downton Abbey, Game of Thrones)

LUKE NORRIS
The Motive & The Cue by Jack Thorne, National Theatre 2023
A View From The Bridge, Young Vic 2014 (Rodolpho)
As You Like It, RSC 2013 (Oliver)
Hamlet, RSC 2013 (Laertes)

RAJ BAJAJ
The Buddah of Suburbia, RSC 2024 (Changez)
The Empress, RSC 2023 (Abdul Karim)
Tamburlaine, RSC 2018
Tartuffe, RSC 2018

EMMA McDONALD
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Watermill 2019 tour (Hippolyta / Titania)
Twelfth Night, Watermill, 2017 (Antonia)
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Watermill 2018
Macbeth, Watermill, 2019

MARK MEADOWS
Alfred Hitchcock Presents: The Musical, Bath 2025
Quiz by James Graham, Chichester 2017
The Magna Carta Plays, Salisbury 2015
King John Globe 2015
Richard III, Trafalgar Studios 2014
The Spire, Salisbury 2012

DANIEL MILLAR
Twelfth Night, RSC 2025
The Pillowman, by Martin McDonagh, West End
The Winter’s Tale, RSC 2013

AMY MORGAN
Travesties, Menier 2016
The Beaux Stratagem, National Theatre (Cherry)
The Broken Heart by John Ford, Wanamaker Playhouse
An Ideal Husband, Chichester 2014