The Constant Wife with Rose Leslie at the RSC’s Swan Theatre – review

It’s odd how the plays of W Somerset Maugham have fallen out of favour whilst those of his contemporaries Noël Coward and Terence Rattigan remain in vogue. On the basis of this witty and wise revival of The Constant Wife starring Rose Leslie as the heroine of the title, some sort of reassessment is due.

In the hands of Laura Wade’s sparkling adaptation, it is a sophisticated comedy of manners stuffed with bons mots and truthful observation. Wade has previously adapted the juvenile Jane Austen novel The Watsons for stage and Jilly Cooper’s Rivals for TV: she understands that social comedy, however exaggerated, is pinned in truth.

Set in 1927, it follows Constance Middleton (Leslie), an apparently happy middle-class woman, whose discovery of her husband’s affair and her unconventional handling of the revelation sets her on her own feminist revolution. The story is presented as sharp and brittle but its moral runs deep. Only when she has established economic freedom can Constance proceed as she chooses; but her power also comes at a cost.

It is part of Wade’s cleverness that she makes it hard to know where Maugham ends and she begins. She emphasises an element of meta-theatricality that sets up the narrative. The action begins with the butler Bentley (a marvellously sympathetic and understated Mark Meadows) raising an eyebrow archly at the audience as he sits at the piano and begins to play Jamie Cullum’s score.

Anna Fleischle’s set is both a naturalistic Harley Street flat, in tones of taupe and subtle pinks, and a time machine where Ryan Day’s light seeps through the walls as the action winds backwards and forwards and a staircase up and down is visible through the screen at the back like an illustration in a storybook.

Constance and her admirer Bernard Kersal (Raj Bajaj) are constantly interrupted in their attempts to see a play called The Constant Wife and worry about missing the first act. “I always like the part at the beginning where everyone’s happy before it all starts to unravel,” she says, archly.

It is all self-conscious. Director Tamara Harvey (who collaborated with Wade before on Home, I’m Darling) lets the characters lean into the action, settling on sofas expecting a dramatic eruption. They talk in aphorisms. Kate Burton’s beautifully brisk and opinionated mother Mrs Culver, is prone to delivering assertions like Lady Bracknell. Told that Constance is unhappy she replies: “Nonsense. She eats well, sleeps well, dresses well and she’s losing weight. No woman can be unhappy in those circumstances.”

It is all incredibly funny, acerbic and beautifully timed. But Wade and Harvey reveal the genuine pain beneath the choices they are all making. The scene where Constance describes dropping her daughter at “Wuthering Gymslip”, a North Yorkshire boarding school, aches with loneliness and doubt.

Leslie, wonderfully rangy and porcelain-edged, flitting about with the nervous energy of an intelligent soul trapped in a conventional setting, lets her feelings pass over her face like clouds. As her wandering husband, Luke Norris is both a monstrous conceit of self-regard and indulgence and a sulky, sad boy who suddenly has to examine the nature of love.

That at heart is what the piece is about. It’s not a lost masterpiece. All Wade’s wit can’t quite disguise moments when it sags. But it is an insightful study of the human heart, full of sharply observed detail about a period when women were trying to carve new lives for themselves, engaged in a constant juggling act of love, marriage, children and career that pursues them today.

Beautifully acted by the entire cast, directed with finesse and flair, it’s a lovely soufflé of feeling and humour, a theatrical treat as stylish and well-judged as the interiors Constance designs.