Kara Tointon to star in Royal Shakespeare Company’s The Constant Wife on tour at York Theatre Royal next January

Kara Tointon in the role of Constance in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s touring production of The Constant Wife

THE Royal Shakespeare Company’s touring production of The Constant Wife is to play York Theatre Royal from January 26 to 31 2026.

2010 Strictly Come Dancing winner Kara Tointon will star in Laura Wade’s new version of W Somerset Maugham’s 1926 comedy, directed by RSC co-artistic director Tamara Harvey.

Described as “a sparkling comedy of ill manners”, The Constant Wife is set in 1927. Constance is a deeply unhappy woman. “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 is the perfect wife and mother, and her husband is as devoted to her as he is to his mistress, who just happens to be her best friend.

The tour poster for the RSC’s The Constant Wife, booked into York Theatre Royal from January 26 to 31 next year

The Constant Wife reunites Olivier Award-winning writer Wade and director Harvey, having worked together on Home, I’m Darling, since when Wade was the executive producer and writer for Rivals, the Disney+ adaptation of Jilly Cooper’s bonkbuster novel.

Kara Tointon has played Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion in London’s West End, Dawn Swann in EastEnders from 20025 to 2009 and Rose Selfridge in the television period drama Mr Selfridge, as well as Bella Manningham in Patrick Hamilton’s Gaslight at the Grand Opera House, York, in February 2017.

RSC co-artistic directors Harvey and Daniel Evans said: “Our ambition is to bring joy to as many audiences as possible, deepening our understanding of ourselves and the world around us, and so we are thrilled to be bringing The Constant Wife to stages across the UK, following its success at the Swan in Stratford.

Kara Tointon as Bella Manningham on tour at Grand Opera House, York, in February 2017

“It will be so exciting to get back into the rehearsal room with our new company, led by the brilliant Kara Tointon, and for us to bring Laura Wade’s razor-sharp script to life.”

The tour is presented by Cunard and David Pugh, five-time Olivier Award and two-time Tony Award winning producer, who said: “I’m delighted to have commissioned Laura Wade to adapt this comedy and to be working with the Royal Shakespeare Company on this new production of The Constant Wife.

“Partnering again with Cunard, with whom I’ve had such a wonderful ongoing relationship, continues to be a joy. For me, in the times that we’re in, there is nothing better than to bring comedy to audiences in theatres all around the UK and to hear people laughing.”

Priority booking for York Theatre Royal members opens today (29/9/2025) from 1pm. Tickets go on general sale on October 4 from 1pm. Box office:  01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk/show/the-constant-wife. Performances will be at 7.30pm plus 2pm Thursday and 2.30pm Saturday matinees.

Keith Allen plays The Homecoming to the Max in third role in Pinter’s brutal comedy

Keith Allen as brutal patriarch Max, ruling his sons with threats and violence, in The Homecoming

KEITH Allen is completing a hattrick of roles spread over 25 years in Harold Pinter’s darkly comic power struggle The Homecoming, on tour at York Theatre Royal from tonight.

At the National Theatre, in 1997, the Welsh actor, comedian, television presenter, documentary maker and rousing punk musician played university professor Teddy, returning from America with his wife Ruth to find his two brothers, Joey and Lenny, and elderly father Max still living at their North London family home.

In 2015, at the Trafalgar Studios, London, he was cast as Uncle Sam. “Now I’m playing Max but that’s as far as I can go because I’m too old to play Joey or Lenny,” says Keith, 68. “Max is the patriarch of a very misogynistic household. Every character is repressed to the nth degree but while most of them repress their rage Max doesn’t.

“He had a very interesting relationship with his now-dead wife that has coloured his whole life and he’s in a household where they’re all playing games and trying to top each other. Everything that’s done is for a reason and it’s usually to get one over on someone else.”

Keith compares former butcher Max to a raging sheep: “If you’ve ever been in a field with a very angry tup, you don’t want to be there. I’ve been there and they don’t back down.”

Director Jamie Glover and actor Mathew Horne, who is playing pimp Lenny, always had Allen in mind for their Pinter project “They’re close mates, and the genesis of the idea to do a Pinter play came from them. They took their idea to Danny Moar at [the Theatre Royal] Bath, originally wanting to do The Caretaker, but the Pinter estate offered the rights to The Homecoming instead.”

Glover and Horne were unsure whether Allen would want to return to Pinter’s 1965 fractured family drama, but “Max is a part I’ve always had my eye on,” says Keith. “I was very lucky to be offered it and I’m very pleased to be doing it.”

After all, The Homecoming is considered to be Pinter’s finest work in its exploration of toxic masculinity, stultifying patriarchy, one-upmanship feuds and sexual powerplays. “I’ve always thought Pinter was a poet before he was a playwright and the poetry is amazing. This whole play is about language and very particular choices of words, which is why as an actor you have to be very on-the-ball about the grammar.

Keith Allen’s Max, seated, and Mathew Horne’s Lenny, centre, in The Homecoming

“I think the lyricism of the play is extraordinarily attractive and the tension has people constantly going, ‘What on earth is happening and what’s going to happen next?’.”

Keith praises not only the writing, but the “brilliant structure” too, describing it as a feat of engineering. “As an actor, you just get your skis on and let the skis guide you,” says the skiing enthusiast.

What does Keith recall of his first performance in The Homecoming? “That was in 1997, directed by Roger Michell, who died last September, bless him. I remember feeling I’d let the cast down in rehearsals, as I would forget my lines, make things up and trip my way through it, playing Teddy to Lindsay Duncan’s Ruth.

“But I got a handle on it in the end, and it was a brilliant way to learn about being still on stage, which is a great skill to master, when a lot of actors get scared if they’re not doing anything.”

Comparing the productions, Keith says: “I have to say that all three have had very different qualities. This one is very funny, much funnier than the other two, because the director chose that path. Jamie Lloyd’s production in 2015 was much bleaker; this one is genuinely funny but also very discerning.

“A hefty contributory factor to that humour is that these men are idiots. They’re fantasists, all trying to be top dog, and that’s funny to watch.”

Assessing The Homecoming’s impact on audiences in 2022, by comparison with 1965, Keith says: “Misogyny is very present in the play, as is generational jealousy within a family. The mother is dead but she looms very large in everyone’s memory, especially Max’s because he loathed her.

“When the play was first performed, I don’t think anyone had seen anything quite so vicious and measured before. Now it’s interesting for different reasons because we’re living in a time where women are becoming far more recognised and are on a far more equal footing.

“As an actor, you just get your skis on and let the skis guide you,” says Keith Allen of the art of performing in a Pinter play

“There are things in the play that could be misconstrued as being abusive to women and, because of the times we’re living in, audiences might react very quickly to certain things which they wouldn’t necessarily have reacted to before.”

Keith has “previous” for Pinter, not only appearing in The Homecoming but also in Pinter 3: Landscape/A Kind Of Alaska in the West End and The Celebration and The Room, both directed by Pinter himself at the Almeida Theatre, London, in 2000 and in New York in 2001. 

“You very quickly realised that Harold chose people for what they could do; he was very careful in his casting,” Keith recalls. “He wouldn’t ask you to act a part, but to ‘be’, so he left you alone and watched.”

As for Pinter’s advice on his notorious use of pauses, “he once quite frivolously said to us, ‘if the pauses don’t work, **** it’, but actually they do work,” says Keith. “It works like a musical score in that what comes before dictates what comes after. It’s all about rhythm.”

After a five-year hiatus, Keith will enjoy his return to York, where he was last seen on stage as Inspector Rough in Patrick Hamilton’s thriller Gaslight at the Grand Opera House in February 2017. ” York is lovely because you’re near the river and there are some lovely pubs,” he says.

“I really like touring. I like the fact that you’re on the move and it’s as if you’re having an opening night every week because you’re in a different space, in a different theatre, with a different ambience.

” I like to fit in some golf wherever I go and I have an ingrained curiosity about corrugated iron chapels and buildings, so I always see if I can find one or two to go and have a look at.”

Theatre Royal, Bath, presents Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming, York Theatre Royal, tonight until Saturday; 7.30pm, plus 2pm, Thursday; 2.30pm, . Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk

Keith Allen as Inspector Rough and Kara Tointon as Bella Manningham in Gaslight at the Grand Opera House, York, in February 2017