Tag: grand opera house york

Kara Tointon’s “eloquent and elegant” Constance Middleton in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s The Constant Wife. All pictures: Mihaela Bodlovic; set and co-costume designer Anna Fleischle; co-costume designer Cat Fuller

OLIVIER Award winner Laura Wade and Royal Shakespeare Company co-artistic director Tamara Harvey open up W Somerset Maugham’s 1926 comedy of well-heeled manners for re-examination in 2026, upping the female ante while retaining the elegant period setting.

First staged at the RSC’s Swan Theatre last June, Wade’s sparky, sparkly adaptation chimes with her hit play Home, I’m Darling’s focus on gender roles, feminism, relationships and life choices while echoing the in-flagrante shenanigans of her Disney + television take on Jilly Cooper’s bonkbuster novel Rivals.

All while staying true to the sceptical satire of Somerset Maugham, such a perceptive observer of human behaviour, exposing our foibles and failings, our uncontrolled urges, in the mire of the moral maze, where deceit and deception play out in different ways.

Philip Rham’s Bentley at the piano in The Constant Wife

He does so with a mischievous air, lighting the touch-paper, then stepping back and watching the fireworks fly, his input mirrored by Philip Rham’s immaculate, piano-playing butler, Bentley, ever alert, ever on hand with the right word or action, yet stoically detached as the heat rises around him.

Bentley remains unflappable, unhurried, a quality shared by Harvey’s direction that lets Wade’s dry-witted dialogue breathe to maximum comic effect, revelling in the chess game of words that fizz like an Alka-Seltzer in water.

Wade’s impact is more reinvigoration (like Richard Bean’s One Man, Two Guvnors update of Goldoni’s Italian farce) than reinvention. Whether using “kid” rather than “child”, or “dot dot dot”, she sometimes veers towards modern idioms, but her take on Somerset Maugham’s characters still exudes the high-society 1920s as much as the Art Deco designs and colours of Anna Fleischle’s set for the London flat of Harley Street doctor John Middleton (Tim Delap) and his wife Constance (Kara Tointon, last seen on a York stage in Patrick Hamilton’s Gaslight at the Grand Opera House in 2017).

Gloria Onitiri’s gloriously carefree Marie-Louise Durham in The Constant Wife. Picture:

Through gauze, movement on stairways and corridors can be seen, informing the audience of who will be entering, and keeping us one step ahead in the tradition of French farce, although the comedy style is more akin to the drawing-room dramas of Noel Coward (and Oscar Wilde too), played out to Jamie Cullum’s jagged new jazz score.

The year is 1927; Constance’s impetuous interior designer sister, Martha Culver (Amy Vicary-Smith, in height-of-Twenties’ fashion Russian boots) is in heated discussion with their cynical mother, Mrs Culver (Jane Lambert understudying gamely – good voice, but stooped demeanour – for Sara Crowe).

We learn that Constance is deeply unhappy. “Nonsense,” counters her mother in Lady Bracknell mode. “She eats well, sleeps well, dresses well and she’s losing weight. No woman can be unhappy in those circumstances.”

Tim Delap’s John Middleton and Kara Tointon’s Constance Middleton not seeing eye to eye in The Constant Wife

Should they tell Constance that they suspect John is being unfaithful? Enter Tointon’s flapper-dressed, poised, gliding Constance and next her best friend, the whirlwind Marie-Louise Durham (Gloria Onitiri), as Wade front-loads the women in Somerset Maugham’s story.

Spoiler alert, it turns out that Constance already knows of cocksure John’s affair, as the play takes a time-out to go back 12 months to when she walked in John and carefree Marie-Louise without them knowing.

That transition is played out with a directorial and design sleight of hand, as the fireplace, wallpaper and door change to before Martha’s interior re-design (topped off with ‘wallpaper’ rolling down to reveal ‘One Year Earlier’). This is typical of the wit of Harvey’s direction.

Sisters doing it for themselves…in different ways: Amy Vicary-Smith’s Martha and Kara Tointon’s Constance in The Constant Wife

Vicary-Smith’s Martha, by the way, is a fusion of two Somerset Maugham characters, the sister and an interior-designer friend, and it works a treat, as Constance takes up an invitation to join her business (hence the re-decoration).

In Wade’s most striking interjection, she plays an ace card with her use of that very fashionable device, meta-theatre, (first by having Constance and still-besotted former beau Bernard Kersal (Alex Mugnaioni) heading off to watch a play called The Constant Wife, then by Martha recapping what unfolded and unravelled  in Act One at the outset of Act Two.

Aside from Bentley at the very start, the men have been held back until the play’s conceit has been established. We judge them through Wade, Harvey and the women’s filter, but they are still given a fair hearing, each tall, dapper, buttoned up and not as clever as they think, whether over-confident John, malleable Bernard or Jules Brown’s cuckolded Mortimer Durham.

Jules Brown’s thoroughly duped Mortimer Durham

Fleischle and Cat Fuller’s costume designs, especially for Constance, Martha and John’s suits, delight as much as the central performances as Somerset Maugham/Wade posit the question of what happens when a wronged woman does not react in the expected way, so much so that everyone else then objects to how Constance has responded (not least in confiding only in Bentley, who has a secret of his own) as she seeks her route to freedom and fulfilment against the conventional tide.

At the RSC production’s core is an outstanding performance by Tointon on her return to the stage after moving to Norway. Her Constance is elegant, eloquent, quick of wit and mind, mischievously humorous, yet serious, a woman in a relationship where they still have love for each other but are no longer in love.

David Pugh & Cunard present the Royal Shakespeare Company in The Constant Wife, York Theatre Royal, until Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2pm Thursday and 2.30pm Saturday matinees. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

By Charles Hutchinson 

Kara Tointon’s Constance Middleton in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s The Constant Wife. Picture: Mihaela Bodlovic; set and co-costume designer Anna Fleischle; co-costume designer Cat Fuller

KARA Tointon  returns to the York stage on Monday for the first time since February 2017.

On that occasion, she appeared as Bella Manningham in Patrick Hamilton’s Gaslight at the Grand Opera House. Now she takes the title role in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s touring production of The Constant Wife at York Theatre Royal.

2010 Strictly Come Dancing winner Kara is starring in Olivier Award winner Laura Wade’s new version of W Somerset Maugham’s sparkling 1926 comedy of ill manners, directed by RSC co-artistic director Tamara Harvey.

“I haven’t done any theatre for a little while, not since I had my second son in 2021, but it doesn’t feel that long as time travels so quickly,” says Kara, 42. “For the last few years, I’ve been focusing on being a mum and moving to Norway in May 2024.

“My partner [Marius Jensen] is Norwegian and has always spoken to the boys [Frey, seven, and Helly, four] in his native tongue and wanted them to understand the language as well as speaking it, so we were spending more and more time there.

Actress Kara Tointon: Back on stage for the first time since having her second son in 2021

“In 2024, because they hadn’t started school yet – they start the year they turn six – we decided to settle in Norway, in the most southern part, where it does get extremely dark by 3.30pm, so you really have to make sure you have your Vitamin D. The sky is so different out there: it’s like nothing you’ve seen over here.”

The Constant Wife returns to Kara to British shores, leading Harvey’s cast from January 16 at The Grand Theatre, Blackpool,  to May 16 at Bath Theatre Royal, before embarking on a Transatlantic Crossing aboard Cunard’s Queen Mary 2.

“I’m back – and it’s a really big role!” says Kara of playing Constance Middleton, who is a deeply unhappy woman in 1920s’ London.  “Nonsense,” says her mother. “She eats well, sleeps well, dresses well and she’s losing weight. No woman can be unhappy in those circumstances.”

Constance may be the perfect wife and mother, but her husband is equally devoted to his mistress, who just happens to be her best friend.

“It’s a gift of a part, and I’ve been an avid fan girl of Laura’s work for years, since I saw a friend in her play Posh. She and Tamara are the best of friends, and they’re like a power team [having worked together on Wade’s play Home, I’m Darling].  It’s a bit of a ‘pinch me’ moment for me to be working with them. Every time Tamara gives me a note in the rehearsal room, it pushes me to do my best, and that’s exciting,” says Lara.

Tim Delap’s John Middleton and Kara Tointon’s Constance Middleton in The Constant Wife. Picture: Mihaela Bodlovic; set and co-costume designer Anna Fleischle; co-costume designer Cat Fuller

“I think what’s incredible with this play is that we’re coming up to 100 years since it was written, but it’s now so relevant that it could be set in 2026, which makes it really relatable. The way Somerset Maugham had written this character as such a powerhouse, she steals the scene in every scene, and it forces us to consider how we make decisions in the moment when sometimes we should take stock.”

In a nutshell, returning home from dropping off her daughter at boarding school, Constance finds her husband disporting himself with her closest friend on the chaise longue. “The play’s about  how she deals with that situation, in that pivotal moment, and you think she’s wonderful because she handles it in such a brilliant way,” says Kara.

“It’s incredible that Somerset Maugham wrote such an incredible piece about a female character from a male perspective, and now I’m enjoying being in a room full of female-led vibes, where Laura and Tamara have elevated the play for a modern audience.

“They’ve made the perfect cuts and turned the structure into three parts, where we flashback once, and then we go back to the moment where we left off for the flashback.”

Harvey’s production will be full of 1920s’ style. “When I had the fitting for the gold dress, it felt very, very special. To have something made for you – really made for you – is fantastic,” says Kara. “The sets are fantastic too: it’s a visual feast, so luxurious.”

Kara Tointon in the tour poster for the Royal Shakespeare Company’s The Constant Wife

Recalling her experience of reading the first few pages of Wade’s adaptation. Kara says: “I laughed out loud – and that’s a good sign! I would say it’s a comedy, though you wouldn’t say a woman walking in on her husband having an affair should be a comedy, but you find yourself falling in love with these three very strong women in the play with their very different feelings and views.

“You can see that even though they’re very different, they’re very close – and that’s lovely to play, so I would say it’s a comedy with feeling.”

The Constant Wife is billed as a “comedy of ill manners”. “It’s all about humanity,” says Kara. “Everyone is messing up. Even with Constance, no matter how brilliantly she plays it, you could question some of the decisions she makes.

“When we do what we do to survive, everyone has a different way of surviving, and that’s why watching any drama is interesting because it makes you question how you would deal with difficult situations.”

Royal Shakespeare Company in The Constant Wife, York Theatre Royal, January 26 to 31, 7.30pm plus 2pm Thursday and 2.30pm Saturday matinees. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk. Also Leeds Grand Theatre, April 13 to 18. 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday matinees. Box office: 0113 243 0808 or leedsheritagetheatres.com.