'Wife' is a constant delight

Clever acting, impeccable staging and delicious turns make this play's charmed, but treacherous, interplay irresistibly inviting.

By John Bancroft, special to the Times
Published December 16, 2007

REVIEW

The Constant Wife

In repertory through March 12 at Asolo Rep's Mertz Theatre, 5555 N Tamiami Trail, Sarasota. Call (941) 351-8000 or toll-free 1-800-361-8388.

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SARASOTA

With the first line of The Constant Wife, even those of us who never knew them long for the days of drawing room wit, lovely manners and conversation as deadly weapon.

Although Asolo Repertory Theatre's production captures the period flawlessly and in high style, Somerset Maugham's 1927 comedy of marriage and manners is neither farce nor quaint period piece. Its sensibility is thoroughly modern. It also is unapologetically grown up. Maugham's characters may behave in private like willful adolescents but in company they practice the art of civility.

The Constant Wife of the title is Constance Middleton, a role played with verve and panache by Dana Green, an accomplished actor who makes her Asolo Rep debut in this juicy role. She will reappear later this season as Ilona in The Play's the Thing, and we can hardly wait. As Constance she commands the stage from the instant of her breathless entrance to the bittersweet flounce of her final exit.

Her philandering husband John, a well-to-do Harley Street surgeon who wears a natty little moustache with aplomb, is played first with wry detachment and, finally, in blustery bewilderment by Bryan Torfeh, another fine actor. He is in his second season here and will reappear with Green as Almady in The Play's the Thing. The delicate chemistry they cook up in Wife bodes well for the later entry in the rep roundabout.

Constance's mother, Mrs. Culver, appears at strategic moments in each act, armored in one deliciously outlandish hat after another, to comment acerbically on the goings on and to instruct her daughter in a woman's proper role in marriage. She is played to parsimonious perfection by veteran actor Carolyn Michel. She may not have the star turn, but her whimsical brand of gravitas helps keep the wheels on when John's infidelity threatens to upset the apple cart of domestic tranquility - but not in the way you might expect.

His paramour, Constance's dear friend Marie-Louise, is so flighty and insubstantial that we know she poses no serious threat to John's self-possessed and beautiful wife. But she is played here in such a shrill key by Julie Lachance that she fails to convince us of her bona fides even as sexpot. Still, she's there and that's all that's really required of Marie-Louise.

More convincing in the role of tempter is John G. Preston as Bernard, the still-smitten suitor who was rejected by Constance in favor of John 15 years earlier. When he returns to England for a breather from his profitable enterprises in China, he asks if he might call on Mrs. Middleton, who accepts. Bernard is big and handsome and jolly and something, we are sure, is bound to come of their reunion.

And something does, but once again it is not exactly what you might expect.

The scene in all three brief acts, the couple's London drawing room, is wonderfully imagined and executed by scenic designer Erik Flatmo. When the curtain rises on that room transformed for the third act - just how it is transformed is one of the nicest surprises in a play full of twists and turns - the opening night audience burst into well-deserved applause.

Deserving of equal approbation are Katherine Roth's sumptuous costumes, which strike just the right notes throughout and play a major role in helping to define the characters. You know a man who wears a gabardine topcoat as well as Bernard has something to recommend him, and then there are those hats. Even the actors' feet, especially the women's, are dressed to tell a story.

Director Mark Rucker's pacing is just right, and the lighting design by James D. Sale brings out every tasty nuance of the superb set and costumes.

John Bancroft is a freelance writer who lives in Bradenton.

[Last modified December 13, 2007, 17:22:54]