What to do when you discover that your husband and best friend are having an affair? It’s a bomb of a question that blows up the comfortable, sedate life of Constance Middleton (Kara Tointon) READ OUR INTERVIEW WITH KARA HERE and sets the scene for Laura Wade‘s adaptation of the original W. Somerset Maugham comedy The Constant Wife, currently showing at Oxford Playhouse.
Constance isn’t short of advice on how to react to the dalliances of bumptious surgeon-husband John (Tim Delap) and flibbertigibbet friend Marie Louise (Goria Onitiri). Her reactionary mother (Sara Crowe) is aghast that she should even consider confronting the philanderers, while her feminist-leaning sister (Amy Vicary Smith) is equally appalled that Constance would just suck it up and do nothing.
With great poise, intelligence, determination and a little help from some unlikely friends, our heroine Constance instead proceeds to navigate her own way out of the pickle that she unexpectedly finds herself in.
Set in the 1920s and spilling over with jazz-age elegance, The Constant Wife asks difficult questions regarding infidelity, women’s lack of financial independence, the point of marriage once the honeymoon period is over and, as a wronged spouse, which is ultimately more satisfying: revenge or forgiveness?
All of this serious stuff is sugar-coated in witty, incisive lines delivered with aplomb by the whole RSC cast, with many laugh out loud moments set against a suave backdrop of decanters, cigarette cases and silk scarves.
From the 1920s to the 2020s, this is a heart-warming, thought-provoking yet still relevant missive.
Edward Bliss
The Constant Wife is at Oxford Playhouse until Saturday (Feb 7) https://www.oxfordplayhouse.com/events/the-constant-wife
