Preview

'The Constant Wife'

To undertake a play, which 50 years ago was deemed 'artificial to the point of obselescence' is a precarious business. However, despite its early lack of success in England, Circa has decided to present W. Somerset Maugham's, commedy of manners, 'The Constant wife.

The audience will be required to dip beneath the superfluous unit, and by dissociating the characters from their period setting, extend the situation beyond its bourgeois origins to enevelope all marriages at all times.

The theme of marital infidelity is as topical as it was in 1926, and despite the subsequent enfranchisement of women, and 50 years of 'sound reform' in-Britain the solution stays the same.

The play, therefore, remains to be seen, not specifically by embittened wives or bemused husbands, but by the married as well as the unmarried.

Director Anne Flanney cites the theme of economic freedom a means to personal freedom' as another universal factor within the play. [unclear: F] those women in the audience whose husbands support them, the character of Constance is immediately identifiable with. For her, personal freedom comes by depositing 1000 pounds p.a into her husband's bank account, for her 'board and lodging'.

For the economically independant, Constance's dilemma may give them an insight into the frustrations experienced by the less fortunate, possibly their own mothers. The indignaties of receiving 'token housekeeping' for work no-one acknowledges as work. The guilt of spending money on themselves that was never really theirs.

The constant wife is constant therefore only by maintaining her social contract. Her escalating sense of personal worth is far from constant and surely for an institution that involves the most people most intimately, this is how it should be?

Circa's production includes a number of New Zealand Drama School graduates. Miss Flanney herself having been closely associated with the school. She has opted not so much for dictatorial direction, but for intelligent interpretations to come from within the actors, resulting in what she fermed as, ensemble playing in the cast'.

The season augurs well in such sensitive hands, but it remains to be seen whether Circa can universalise, what could be anachonistic frivolity.

Elizabeth Ross