THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
By Laura Wade, based on the play by W. Somerset Maugham
RSC – Swan Theatre, Stratford upon Avon until August 2, 2025
Laura Wade (Home I’m Darling, Posh) has done wonders here, delicately updating Maugham’s quite subversive 1920s comedy, a significant hit in its day but now largely and unfairly neglected.
Like Rattigan, Maugham too fell out of favor in the 1950s and ‘60s when the Angry Young Men had their moment. In the end, though, they seem to have won out because, as with Coward, while the writing here is elegant and finely tooled on the surface, there’s a deep well of feeling underneath. This is actually a great feminist text (who’da thunk?) and Wade has just had to slightly polish aspects of it for a modern audience. She’s merged two characters (a good idea) and moved the big discovery of the infidelity to the beginning to give it more dramatic punch, but it’s all so subtle you can’t see the joins.
First staged in 1926, on the cusp of full women’s suffrage (1928), it was that liminal period when hair was being bobbed, hemlines were rising, and debates about women’s roles, rights, and independence were coming to a head. The play, which offers an alternative view on how to deal with an extramarital affair, definitely captured the zeitgeist and was a huge hit.
It tells the story of Constance, a stylish, upper-class woman who discovers her husband has been unfaithful, but rather than fall apart or fall into line as so many women without other means had to do, she quietly transforms the terms of her marriage, earning her own income in her fiery sister’s interior design business. This not only gives her “running away money” but is also her chance to declare her sexual independence from her husband. This is less Nora Helmer (of A Doll’s House) slamming the door on her husband than an exercise in one-upmanship, where instead she changes the game and does it all with wit rather than melodrama. And what could be more British than that?
Rose Leslie (of Game of Thrones and The Good Fight fame) is solid as the intelligent, perceptive, and quietly determined Constance and totally looks the part, but it’s a role that calls out for a bit more starry flamboyance. Kate Burton, on a visit from New York, who was acclaimed and Tony nominated in 2005 for playing Constance, now plays the mother and steals the show. It’s a zinger of a part. She gets the best bon mots and has the comic timing and finesse at physical comedy to pull them off. The mother has no truck with modern notions – men are to be forgiven their transgressions, as they’re no better than errant puppies.
This infuriates her single daughter Martha (a great Amy Morgan), who encourages Constance to blow up all this deceit. Luke Norris is perfect as the smug, hypocritical surgeon husband, and Emma McDonald does some spirited action on the chaise longue as Constance’s supposed best friend, the third point in the love triangle. Mark Meadows is suitably droll in the beefed-up role of the butler.
Director Tamara Harvey hits exactly the right tone with it. It’s so well-honed, the play never sags for an instant, and the aphorisms don’t derail the dramatic momentum.
Anna Fleischle’s beautiful taupe set perfectly embodies Constance’s interior designer tastes. Gauzes allow us to see who the butler is bringing up. The typical ornate clutter of drawing room comedies of that is are replaced by a cleaner Bauhaus aesthetic, which fits well with the Harley Street location. Particular standouts are Fleischle and Cat Fuller’s costumes, inspired by the art movements of the time. They are only naturalistic to a point but then really run with the androgynous silhouettes of the era’s daywear and sportswear. The striking geometric patterns and stylized graphic prints speak to the increasing autonomy of women at the time.
The play hums like a Rolls-Royce but is never arch or flippant, and it reminds us that the questions women posed in 1926, about how they might be allowed to live and love, remain just as alive today.