Fresh from its run last year in Stratford-upon-Avon, this Royal Shakespeare Company production of The Constant Wife visits the Theatre Royal Brighton ahead of its journey up the M23 and into the West End. A masterful adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham’s poignant comedy, this production will have you laughing, debating and deliberating long after the curtain comes down.
Constance Middleton lives a good life. Affluent and assured, surrounded by a close circle of friends and family as well as a high-earning husband on her arm who showers her with gifts and flirtatious flattery. Just as he does so with his mistress. This scandalous, society-rocking affair, between Mr Middleton and Constance’s best friend Marie-Louise, comes to light through their carelessness and, as it does so, we can detect playwright Laura Wade’s deft hand behind the pen. Known for her plays including Home, I’m Darling and Posh as well as the adaptation of Jilly Cooper’s Rivals for Disney+, under Wade’s expert hand what initially begins as a high society (with low morals) drama – with all the quirks, quibbles and quarrels that that entails – is quickly turned on its head.
Awash with the witticisms of Oscar Wilde and ripe with the comic antagonism of Noel Coward, you might be forgiven for settling in for two acts of comfortably amusing entertainment. Yet what follows is innovative and interrogative. The drama is bold and brash, the jokes snarl and bear their teeth. It is both of its time and yet somehow timeless. This is Private Lives lived out loud and beneath the etiquette and ideals of 1920s Britain lies a pointed social criticism and emotional depth which anchors the play into territory an audience can sink its teeth into.
Playwright Wade and director Tamara Harvey manage to conjure a calm and natural style that still, at times, dabbles with the meta and briefly flirts with the farcical. If the first act is the unravelling of normalcy then the second act is the ravelling of a new and better normal, the journey to it both absurd and acerbic.
Kara Tointon, as Constance, is magnetic, channeling a quiet “no-net-ensnares-me” energy as she plays the powerful at their own game. The weaving of a cunning ploy sees her get even on her own terms and no one else’s. She is supported by a fantastic ensemble with special mention going to Tim Delap as husband John – competently and comically putting the “ass” into “assured” – as well as Sara Crowe, playing Constance’s mother, who undergoes a pivotal shift in outlook as the play progresses.
These characters may represent various point-making attitudes but they are nevertheless well-defined in their own right, not simply straw-men arguments flimsily propped up for the sake of knocking down what they represent. They are mothers, lovers, servants and sisters – shaped by their experiences – their hurts and their highs, their lows and losses – that, in turn, shape and govern their own attitudes and behaviour. They speak a language of rules, outdated, updated and even backdated to justify and conventionalise a shared story that serves them.
And at the centre of it all stands Constance; a woman wholly expected to behave in a myriad of ways by this myriad of characters and then condemned for whatever course she chooses to take. The Constant Wife shines a light on these hypocritical notions. For surely, if someone is damned if they do and damned if they don’t then maybe the problem lies not with those who do (or do not) but with those who damn? Laura Wade’s poignant and pointed comedy drama pulls back the curtain on female disempowerment and asks, in a world of ever-changing mores and morals, what is it to remain constant?
Theatre Royal Brighton | Monday 23rd February 2026
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Photo by Mihaela Bodlovic
