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Drama

'The Constant Wife'

Circa's 'Constant Wife' is a faithful presentation, as faithful to period detail as it is to the themes it espouses. The design is a masterpiece of congruity. The set a discreetly diluted Art Deco abomination—the costumes flattering the individuals and complementing the group. Only the strains of Strauss's 'Trish Trash' [unclear: Pol. a], and similarly ill-chosen pieces disturbed the atmosphere of affected elegance.

Before assessing Circa's interpretation of it, we can ask ourselves why the play was chosen. Certainly within the genre of 20's comedies it had audience appeal (which invariably prove their popularity by extending seasons of such worthy classics as Coward's 'Private Lives.') But why the 'Constant Wife? 'Is it the heart-twanging struggle of a woman liberating herself within marriage—or is it aesthetic brilliance coupled with Maugham's undeniable [unclear: with] think the latter.

Heroine Constance, is no less than Wonder Woman—Maugham's mouthpiece in which half the seeds of a utopic marriage are sown. Little wonder she's hardly bevlieable. When Maughem gives us the end-product of her thinking, with none of the introspection and tortuous self-seeking that must have preceeded it. Consequently she she operates in an emotional vacuum fed by such paralogisms that would enable her to buy her way out of sexual fidelity in her marriage.

She cites the modern wife as a prostitute who, 'doesn't deliver the goods,' but she can just as easily be labelled a prostitute even if it is an inverted kind. Her friend Marie-Louise can be accused of tactful understatement when saying, 'Oh, but you are cold Constance. . .' because she's downright frigid!

However this is no reflection on the actress (Frances Edmond.) Her's was the unenviable task of humanising a paragon, but her obvious talent and intelligence combined with an over-awing presence, salvaged the few poignant moments in the play. Her husband Peter McCauley, provides sharp contrast, to her with his sympathetic naturalism.

Throughout the play there is an extraordinary range of acting styles with McCauley at one pole and Prue Langbein's caricatured Marie-Louise at the other. One hopes Miss Langbein is not to be stereo-typed as a 'twitty-twenties' lady, as her Marie—Louise shows she has indeed perfected it.

considered fuel for feminism, which a reading of the script implies. In performance Constance's ideology is unsubtle and her person inaccessible to the audience. We remember her bitchy sister and how the ridiculous Mortimer made us laugh, and possibly we might have some vague recollection of speeches about economic freedom for women—but that is all they were, speeches.

Possibly Maugham was wrong in choosing a comedy of manners as a vehicle for his thoughts when we laugh at their expense. So Circa can be forgiven for not inspiring us and congratulated for amusing us a great deal.

—Elizabeth Ross.