Home and Beauty

Synopsis

A comedy. Major William Cardew is reported killed at the Battle of Ypres in the First World War. Cardew's wife, Victoria, becomes romantically involved with his best friend Major Frederick Lowndes. She marries Lowndes but Cardew returns...

Our Review:

30 October 2002

In 1918, the First World War drew to an exhausted close and W Somerset Maugham, himself exhausted after a bout of tuberculosis, retreated to a Scottish sanatorium to convalesce. You might think such a state of affairs would dampen Maugham's spirits and steer his writing towards sombre reflection. Quite the opposite turned out to be the case.

In fact, the author recalls his "grand time" at the sanatorium where he "discovered for the first time in my life how very delightful it is to lie in bed". It was in this elevated frame of mind that he penned Home and Beauty, which "pretends to be no more" than a farce whose object "is the entertainment of the audience, not their improvement."

More than eight decades on, Home and Beauty retains its power to amuse and, more than three decades after its last London revival (at the National with Geraldine McEwan, Robert Stephens and Robert Lang in 1968), director Christopher Luscombe rediscove...

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Latest User Review

USER: Whatsonstage.com (213.253.138.6) - 13 November 2002:

Loved the play! Particularly liked Alexander Armstrong and Jamie Theakston's performances and the camio roles played by Jane Howe and Cate Debenham Taylor. Please, please, please lets have more comedies like this....

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