The Constant Wife

Laura Wade, after W Somerset Maugham

David Pugh & Cunard

Lowry, Salford

March 17-21, 2026: 2 hrs 15 mins

(Also at Leeds Grand, April 14-18 and other venues)

Kara Tointon as Constance in The Constant Wife. All pics: Mihaela Bodlovic

It will be just a century, later this year, since Somerset Maugham’s The Constant Wife was written. Described as a comedy of manners, it was successful both in America and here, with artists such as Ethel Barrymore and Ingrid Bergman in the leading role.

This is an adaptation – almost a new play – by Laura Wade, and in one way is reminiscent of Aaron Sorkin’s new version of To Kill a Mockingbird, seen at the Lowry theatre earlier this year. There’s the same change of structure, with the big reveal near the beginning and the things that led up to it presented in flashback. No copyright on ideas, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and all that: what’s perhaps unusual is that this is from an existing play.

It’s very, very entertaining though, with care lavished on a recreation of the original’s period in set and costume design (the females, in particular, go through a succession of posh frocks in 1920s styles), and a constant eye to the fun side of the story, which has become a kind of modern rom-com. Though the central characters begin married, they end with a new understanding of what their relationship means. The women’s psychologies are more interestingly explored than those of the men, who verge on stereotypical.

The show is being marketed as “the Royal Shakespeare Company production”, first performed in Stratford last year, and the touring version, destined for the West End, is again directed by Tamara Harvey, former Theatr Clwyd artistic boss and now co-artistic director of the RSC, with Anna Fleischle’s design.

The story? Constance is the perfect wife and mother, and her husband is as devoted to her as he is to his mistress... who is her best friend. I won’t spoil it for you, but she’s a woman of independent mind who finds a very clever way of levelling the account.

Constance is played by Kara Tointon – a little more world-weary and calculating, perhaps, than she needs to be, but dominating the stage at almost every point. Jocasta King took over the role of the adulterous best friend, Marie-Louise, last night (programme billing is Gloria Onitri) and made an interesting study of her - not so much femme fatale as innocent airhead.

Sara Crowe is Constance’s mother, mouthpiece of an older generation’s views of how a wife should behave (accepting of the philanderings of men and careful over what she chooses to know).

By contrast, Constance’s unmarried businesswoman sister Martha, as seen here, is like a time traveller from the 21^st Century. Amy Vicary-Smith embodies with great gusto ideas that, if they existed in the 1920s, must have been pretty radical. I haven’t seen the 1926 play, so I don’t know whether that’s how Somerset Maugham saw her (and in this she’s a conflation of two people from the original anyway), but if so, she was a very modern woman indeed, and she brings sparky life to what could seem a very cynical tale.

Tim Delap (the philandering husband), Jules Brown (the innocent cuckold) and Alex Mugnaioni (the naive old flame and potential new love for Constance) do well with the material they are given, but Bentley the butler has become (in what Laura Wade acknowledges as her own elaboration) a far more interesting character than he might have been, and is beautifully played by Philip Rham.

This Constant Wife will undoubtedly be a big success as it gathers confidence and pizazz – I just hope they manage to fix the issues with the set-changing gadgetry, which on press night turned out to be a little imitative of The Play That Goes Wrong.

More info and tickets here