Playhouse reviving comedy of 1920s morality

Tom Titus

W. Somerset Maugham doesn’t exactly roll trippingly off the tongue

like, say, Neil Simon, among today’s theatergoers, but that doesn’t

mean his work isn’t worth revisiting. Just ask Andrew Barnicle,

artistic director of the Laguna Playhouse.

Barnicle is directing Maugham’s comedy of manners and morality,

“The Constant Wife,” as the playhouse’s next production. The play

transpires in 1927 London and is described as a “biting comedy of

manners about high society infidelity and inequality of the sexes.”

The Laguna production opens , ironically, on Valentine’s Day.

“I see Maugham as sort of a bridge between [Oscar] Wilde and

[Noel] Coward,” Barnicle declares. “The play is very funny and

clever, but not a farce, and there is some serious social commentary

being made about sexual mores and the men/women social and economic

relationship in contemporary society.”

In “The Constant Wife,” a woman who thinks she has the perfect

marriage discovers what everyone else seems to know -- that her

husband has been having a long-standing love affair. Determined not

to allow it to destroy their bond, she grows fascinated with

society’s double standard -- which leads her to explore the

possibility of tasting some forbidden fruit of her own.

“What she finally does takes her a year to concoct and is beyond

the comprehension of anyone else in the play,” Barnicle notes.

“For me, it’s been refreshing to work on a stylish drawing room

comedy,” the director adds. “We’re all told by serious critics that

we are supposed to hate these kinds of plays, but I’m not all that

angry with realism. It’s simply another conventional mode of

storytelling, and in this case very well done.”

At Laguna, the title role will be taken by Devon Raymond, who’ll

be familiar to South Coast Repertory audiences -- or at least those

who catch “A Christmas Carol” every year. Raymond has performed in 14

of the company’s 24 renditions, primarily as Mrs. Cratchit.

Kevin Symons, who scored highly in the playhouse’s “Rounding

Third” last season, is cast as the cheating husband. Broadway veteran

Mimi Cozzens will portray Raymond’s mother.

Rounding out the cast are Kirsten Potter, Catherine O’Connor,

Stephanie Cushna, Time Winters and Tom Shelton. Dwight Richard Odle

is designing the set with Julie Keen doing the period costumes and

Paulie Jenkins and David Edwards in their regular positions as

designers of lighting and sound, respectively.

Maugham, who died in 1965 at the age of 91, was a prolific

playwright and novelist who began his career as a surgeon. His

best-known works probably are the novels “Of Human Bondage” and “The

Razor’s Edge.”

“The Constant Wife,” one of his most celebrated comedies, has been

produced three times on Broadway, in 1926, 1951 (with Katherine

Cornell) and 1975 (with Ingrid Bergman). It’s had but one other

recent production locally, at the Newport Theater Arts Center a few

seasons ago.

* TOM TITUS reviews local theater for the Coastline Pilot.