The Constant Wife: Theatre Royal

Playwright Somerset Maugham knew a thing or two about performing respectability while living something altogether more complicated. A gay man navigating Edwardian propriety through a series of discreet arrangements, he understood, in his bones, one suspects, exactly what it costs to maintain the façade. That his most bracingly feminist play should arrive in 2026, refracted through Laura Wade's scalpel-sharp adaptation and Tamara Harvey's beautifully measured direction, feels less like revival and more like reckoning.

Hanna Tointon's Constance Middleton is the kind of woman who has always known everything and chosen, strategically, to know nothing. Her husband John's infidelity is the room's worst-kept secret, except Constance got there first. She has simply decided not to perform the expected devastation. In a heteropatriarchal institution that trades women's economic dependence for performative ignorance, she is playing the long game. And she plays it exquisitely.

Here is where our queer gaze sharpens everything beautifully: Maugham wrote this from the inside of a double life, and Wade clearly understands that inheritance. The entire moral architecture of the piece rests on exposing how heterosexual convention demands compliance from everyone while extending grace to almost no one. The hypocrisies Constance endures, the double standards, the performative respectability, the economic cage dressed as domestic comfort, will register with a queer audience as something intimately familiar: Hetroregulation. We have always known what it is to exist in structures designed by and for other people's comfort.

The Bauhaus-inflected design is all cool geometry and warm secrets, while Jamie Cullum's jazz score provides exactly the right note of sophisticated melancholy beneath the laughter. The quality of costume is superb, I was marvelling at the sublime stylish costume and outfits almost as much as the quality of the acting- what a well turned out show. Wade's metatheatrical touches forge a private conspiracy between Constance and the audience; a knowing glance across the footlights that feels rather queer in the best possible sense.

Full cast and creatives here:

A century after Maugham put pen to paper from the closet, his most subversive posh heroine finally gets the adaptation she deserved, wickedly funny, quietly furious, and unexpectedly moving. Constance Middleton would absolutely have been a lesbian ally; Tointon makes you wish she'd gone further. This is a perfectly enjoyable night at the theatre with a top notch cast performing with flair, subtlety and grace.

By the curtain, the laughter sits in your chest alongside something more complicated. Several audience members, straight and queer alike, will find a particular character has gotten uncomfortably close to home. That, one rather suspects, is exactly what Maugham intended all along, even if he could never quite say so.

Until Sat 28th Feb for more info or to book tickets see the Theatre Royal website

The Constant Wife: Theatre Royal | RSC Touring Production 2025