THE CONSTANT WIFE. To 2 October.
London
THE CONSTANT WIFE
by Somerset Maugham
Apollo Theatre To 22 June 2002
Mon-Sat 8pm Mats Thur 3pm & Sat 4pm
Runs 2hr 25min One interval
TICKETS 0870 890 1101
Review Timothy Ramsden 15 April 2002
Transfers to Lyric Theatre, 2 July-2 October 2002
TICKETS 0870 890 1107
More than a trifle light as air, this play fits like a glove in Shaftesbury Avenue.The Constant Wife was one of the 'angryman' plays of the 1920s. It's not radical in the society it examines; though the action's set in 1926/7 you'd never guess there's been a general strike. This is the comfortable lifestyle, encapsulated in Michael Pavelka's tastefully cream and light brown drawing-room, which once passed for the whole globe in the West End world.
Its radicalism was sexual. Interrupting a cosily epigrammatic gathering, Constance Middleton calmly reveals she's known all along about her society-doctor husband's affair with her best-friend, then analyses middle-class marriage as a sanctioned sex-for-money relationship.
Having discharged her financial debt to Middleton, she sails away with a newly-flickering old flame. Though she's no Nora Helmer it's only for a six-week holiday, not the struggle of lifelong independence.
As others whirl around in self-exculpation and unmanageable tempers, her real constancy is to her own values.
The best of Edward Hall's production is that it respects Maugham's script, playing it pacily - though some of the early chat tends to rattle with the regularity of a locomotive steaming full-ahead over old track. Generally, players do the play proud.
Linda Thorson plays the Victorian mother with a thoroughly post-war modernity which suits the role and Serena Evans gives a sharp reality to Constance's acid-witted younger sister.
A stylistic disparity reflects the final fortunes of Constance's men. Simon Williams' hearty expat lover takes on increasingly buoyant comic tones, contrasting the near tragic intensity the excellent Steven Pacey eventually brings to Constance's husband.
The rival women contrast too. Sara Crowe is wheeled once again onto the West End stage as the brazen blonde, an airhead floosie whose dalliance with Middleton becomes understandable when Eric Carte's bull-head husband bursts on the scene, eyebrows angrily horned, in jealous rage.
Jenny Seagrove carries Constance well to the late, single interval, though in the final act, which is hers to command, the voice needs greater tonal range and the character something more than the loose-limbed smiling we continue to be given.
Still, it's pleasant to be reminded so elegantly that Maugham spoke frankly and in such a clear voice.
Mrs Culver: Linda Thorson
Bentley: Robin Browne
Martha Culver: Serena Evans
Barbara Fawcett: Lucy Fleming
Constance Middleton: Jenny Seagrove
Marie-Louise Durham: Sara Crowe
John Middleton, FRCS: Steven Pacey
Bernard Kersal: Simon Williams
Mortimer Durham: Eric Carte
Director: Edward Hall
Designer: Michael Pavelka
Lighting: Ben Ormerod
Sound: Simon Whitehorn
2002-04-17 10:37:03