What a pleasure it is to hear gales of hearty audience laughter ring out at the august Royal Shakespeare Company. This newly energised organisation takes a temporary break from the Bard (purists need not fret, however, as The Winter’s Tale opens imminently) to present the combined talents of a classic 20th century playwright and one of today’s leading writers.
Laura Wade, part of the creative engine behind the successful television adaptation of Jilly Cooper’s Rivals, turns her attention to a 1926 play by W Somerset Maugham and the results of this century-spanning collaboration are sharp, fresh and feminist, not to mention very witty.
It’s a considerable advantage that the Maugham original is largely unknown nowadays, meaning that Wade has free rein to tweak away without incurring excess ire. The titular spouse is Constance (Games of Thrones star Rose Leslie, in a promising sign of the calibre of actors now being lured to Stratford upon Avon), 15 years married to Harley Street doctor John (Luke Norris).
The opening scene has Constance’s mother Mrs Culver (Kate Burton) and sister Martha (Amy Morgan, excellent) engaged in a family flap. They know that John has been having an affair with Constance’s friend Marie-Louise (Emma McDonald) and there is heated debate about whether or not she should be told.
Kate Burton, left, and Rose Leslie on stage in Stratford (Photo: Johan Persson)Mrs Culver is a staunch upholder of old-fashioned views of matrimony. “She eats well, sleeps well, dresses well and she’s losing weight. No woman can be unhappy in those circumstances,” she says pragmatically of her daughter. Yet Martha, a proudly independent – not to mention unmarried – interior designer, is horrified.
When Constance eventually finds out, she does not react in the way that anyone expects. “My response is my own,” she says firmly and thus follows a pleasingly twisty exploration of marriage and fidelity, as Leslie shows a woman quietly yet determinedly doing things her own way.
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Tamara Harvey’s crisp and stylish production has great fun with the verve and bounce of Wade’s words. The work is joyfully self-referential about the tricks and artifices of the theatre (Constance is perpetually on the brink of going to see a play called, yes, The Constant Wife) and there is an overall sensation of arch glitter covering deep profundity, in the style of Noel Coward.
There are occasional moments of unsubtlety more befitting Downton Abbey than Somerset Maugham and it could all be usefully wrapped up more swiftly than it is. Still, we never grow tired of gazing longingly at Anna Fleischle’s sumptuous set and costumes and I defy any woman this summer not to desire the “scandalous beach trousers” that Constance packs in her suitcase.
To Aug 2 (01789 331111, rsc.org.uk)
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