The Letter

Synopsis

Somerset Maugham's classic tale of revenge and deceit. When the wife of a Malaysian rubber planter is witnessed murdering a local playboy, she claims it was self-defence. Convinced of her innocence, her husband hires a family friend to defend her. However, a mysterious letter subsequently comes to light, casting doubt on her integrity and threatening to cost her everything. The 1940 film version of this dark and steamy psychological thriller received 7 Oscar nominations including 'Best Picture' and 'Best Actress' for Bette Davis.

Our Review:

2 May 2007

Somerset Maugham’s 1927 melodrama was adapted from his own short story with a great dramatic twist. Leslie Crosbie, the wife of a British rubber planter on the Malay Peninsula, is reported to have killed a man, Geoffrey Hammond, who tried to rape her while her husband was away on business in Singapore. In the final pages of the story, after an acquittal at her trial for murder, she casually tells the truth in direct speech: Hammond was a lover who had deserted her for a Chinese woman.

In the theatre, Leslie has to perform both speeches herself, and the flaw in Alan Strachan’s otherwise sensitive and confidently laid out production is that Jenny Seagrove makes no great distinction between them. Instead of a woman covering up her guilt and then collapsing into confessional anguish, she remains the same taut, tight colonial lady of leisure from start to finish. Maybe this is the point.

If so, it scuppers the power of a play that hinges on the criminal act of Leslie’s ...

Read more of the review

Latest User Review

David Baxter - 20 July 2007:

By jove the lengths a chap has to go to, to help out a chum whose wife has just shot a blackguard. And those Chinese are fearfully shifty blighters. It's hardly surprising that Somerset Maugham fell out of fashion for so long and yet The Letter succeeds because it is played absolutely straight with no sense of modern irony or condescension. Good performances throughout including an understudy, as the cuckolded husband, freed from his usual demanding role as the corpse. Anthony Andrews brings exactly the right amount of stiffness to the part of the lawyer who bends enough to subvert the law to protect his friend, but the gay subtext is so subtle that it could easily be missed. Bill Kenwright might only revive Maugham's work because it provides ideal parts for the rather limited Jenny Seagrove, but there should always be a place for good old-fashioned storytelling....

Read more and add your own review

Related Whatsonstage.com Articles

Review Round-up: Strachan Delivers Strong Letter More»