Retired - Not Out: The Constant Wife - Swan Theatre

A visit to Stratford to see "The Constant Wife" by Somerset Maugham at the Swan Theatre.

A straightforward journey, and then parking as usual in the Church Street Car Park. A walk through town and then, for a change, we headed across the river over the Grade II listed pedestrian Tramway Bridge.

Looking back at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre:

The Ferris wheel (bigger, apparently, than last year's) seemed fairly empty, but there were excited voices coming from the few cars that were occupied:

Looking across to the Grade I listed, and much older, Clopton Bridge:

Our first (but hopefully not our last) visit to The Boat House, where we were seated on the balcony. The views in all directions were most acceptable:

so your author was a happy bunny:

The view inside:

and back to the Tramway Bridge:

An excellent burger for me, and a rump cap steak for Amanda:

followed by my habitual chocolate ice cream, and sticky toffee pudding for Amanda:

A gentle stroll to the theatre. Looking back to The Boat House just visible on the far side of the Tramway Bridge:

It was stiflingly hot in Stratford, so I was pleased to arrive at the Theatre in plenty of time for a restorative ginger beer in the Swan Bar.

We took our seats in the blessedly cool Swan Theatre. In one of the reviews listed below, the critic reflects on "how they would fit a proscenium arch stage drawing room set on a thrust stage, but they do", and I agreed with his assessment that the deceptively simple set was one of the best seen in recent years:

Portions of the rear of the set were semi-opaque, allowing us to see characters appearing in shadow on staircases before they entered the drawing room. During a flashback scene, sections of wallpaper seemed miraculously to half-peel off the walls, the previously brown-painted door into the room transformed into a semi-sanded blue, and parts of the floor covering, as if by magic, pulled back to reveal an ornate tile floor beneath - all, taken together, indicating a room in a state of being decorated.

Obligatory selfie:

And so to the play. We throughly enjoyed it - I would happily go to see it again before the end of the run, but in the few remaining performances there are only a handful of standing-only tickets still available. Rose Leslie (of "Game of Thrones" and "married to Kit Harrington" fame - neither means much to me) was excellent as Constance Middleton, the titular "Constant Wife", and was supported by a uniformly excellent cast.

Maugham's original text had been tweaked by the writer Laura Wade, and the mark of how well she had done this was the difficulty we had in 'seeing the joins'. That said, one obvious - and deliciously funny - change occurred at the beginning of the second act, with Constance and her long-time admirer Bernard trying to leave the house to go to the theatre to see a play called "The Constant Wife"... With the couple having been considerably delayed in their attempts to leave by events occurring at the end of Act 1, one character helpfully noted that they should have no difficulty in catching up, because so many such plays begin their second act with one of the characters providing a helpful summary of what has happened thus far - at which point Constance's sister (played by Amy Morgan) launched into a frantic tour-de-force summary of what had happened in the first act that we had just seen that was so well delivered the whole house broke into spontaneous applause at the end of it.

More detailed reviews are listed below, and a number give further useful insights.

A straightforward run home, reflecting on a most enjoyable outing.