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The Constant Wife / 4.48 Psychosis (Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford-Upon-Avon) - ★★★★ REVIEWS
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- [01:45]
Mickey Jo
Two plays, both alike in Dignity, Both produced at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford Upon Avon and otherwise entirely different. Oh my God. Hey, welcome back to my theatre themed YouTube channel. Or hello to you if you are listening on podcast platforms. My name is Mickey Jo and I am obsessed with all things theater theatre. I'm a professional theatre critic here in the UK and today I bring you the Culture Hour in which we are going to be talking about back to back theatrical experiences I had earlier this week at the RSC in Stratford Upon Avon. A collection of theatrical venues which I don't have the opportunity to visit nearly as much as I would like to. But this week I did. I was there two nights in a row to see two different plays, neither of which were written by Shakespeare. And that already may be something that you don't know about the rsc, though of course the work of Shakespeare comprises a huge proportion of their programming. They also produce revivals of other classic plays. They also produce new work. Later this year they are producing the UK premiere of Fat Ham, which of course has a link to Shakespeare. But I was there to see a new adaptation of the Constant Wife by Laura Wade, as well as a remounting a revival of Sarah Kane's 448 psychosis. Incredibly different plays that we're going to be talking about today with back to back reviews. Are you excited? You should be excited. I'm excited. It's midnight here and I'm about to spend an hour talking to the tiny people inside my camera about why I loved these two pieces of theatre so much. How could I not be excited? And the conversations that we're going to be able to have about them are strikingly interesting and strikingly different. Now, if you have been lucky enough to see either of these productions, I would love to know what you thought as well. In the comments section down below. Feel free to share all of your thoughts. Or indeed if you've seen any other productions either of other versions of the Constant wife or of448 psychosis. If you maybe saw the original production of this 25 years ago at the Royal Court. And as always, if you enjoy listening to what I have to say, you want to hear more of my theater reviews, make sure you're subscribed to my theatre themed YouTube channel or following me on podcast platforms. In the meantime, let's talk about some theatre from the RSC so beginning then with the Constant Wife this is, like I said, a new adaptation by Laura Wade based on the play by W. Somerset Maugham. Am I pronouncing that correctly? Maw MAU MAU MAU am a o a m apologies. That awakened something in me, an early 20th century writer whose work I can't say I'm too familiar with. I had not seen any version of the Constant Wife prior to this production. It's not something that gets produced particularly often, and so there are going to be a lot of finer points about the nuances of this as an adaptation that I won't necessarily be able to speak to. However, what's very interesting is that in the identity of this piece you felt a sense of the classic sensibility infused with a sort of a contemporary energy. It wasn't recontextualized in a newer time period. We were still very much taking place in the 20s, so the sensibilities and attitudes of the characters were the same as they would have been, but there was a sense of vitality to it, and a handful of moments where a more modern sense of urgency and sense of emotional clarity broke through what would have been the kind of tone and style of light comedy drama at the time. Almost as if this sort of facade of pretense and nicety and forced smiles was dropped so that these women who were still existing as second class citizens financially and legally within their own marriages, as you know, the property of their husbands, could really feel the harsh iniquity and reality of their situations. And that kind of subterranean of tension is also very at home with the themes of this play. Let me tell you a little bit more about this synopsis and the constant wife herself. She is Constance Middleton, who discovers that her husband is having an affair with one of her closest friends, a very attractive woman by the name of Mary Louise, who herself is also married at the play's commencement. However, we have no idea that Constance knows about the affair and neither does her horrified sister, who believes everyone else is aware that her husband is carrying on behind her back except for Constance. And she's increasingly baffled about how her sister could possibly be this oblivious. We come to find out that she isn't oblivious whatsoever. And when Mary Louise's husband arrives and produces Constance's husband's discarded cigarette case found beneath his wife's pillow, she advocates on behalf of the two of them and convinces this jealous man that his wife couldn't possibly be having an affair. And it in fact is he who is hugely out of line in making this kind of an accusation and he ought to fall down in contrition before her, which he subsequently does. And it's only when he leaves the room that Constance reveals to everyone else in the traditional theatrical drawing room that she has of course known about the affair for some time. And to everyone's insurmountable shock, she is far more outraged that her husband could have conducted it with such sloppiness rather than the affair taking place in the first instance. Now, it's at this point that Laura Wade makes something of an interjection, because we see a flashback taking us several months backwards in time to the moment when Constance first discovered the affair by walking in on the two of them and then leaving quietly before they could realize that they had been caught. The way that we transition to this, by the way, is this glorious transition of the scenic design design this, the work of Anna Fleishel. And with this underscoring of deliberately cacophonous jazz by none other than Jamie Cullum, the brilliant jazz musician. We see wallpaper unpeeling itself, we see carpet being pulled up. We see this transformation of the set and of their home as we move backwards before it had been so lovingly decorated. We see Mark Meadows, slightly baffled butler, rearranging things and questioning why pieces of furniture have disappeared. It's all very tongue in cheek. It's a very play from director Tamara Harvey. But what this moment does is adds to the brilliant wit of the original premise. This substantial scene in which Constance, who for much of the thing, is regarded by her own family members, by her mother, by her sister, by her hugely shocked husband, and by Mary Louise, her closest friend and her husband's lover, as a stoic and coldly unemotional woman. A moment of genuine, raw humanity in which she, in real time, mourns for the loss of her marriage as she understood it. What's really interesting is that the choice is also made that she is returning from having taken their child to boarding school, and she's already feeling a substantial quantity of emotions around that. And her role and identity as a mother is a huge component of Laura Wade's version of this story. This is not just the constant wife, this is the constant wife and mother, which also, I think, adds to the outrage of the infidelity in the first place. Not only did her husband not go with her to take the child to school, he spent that time conducting an extramarital affair with her best friend. Now, Constance's masterstroke here is not to bring her awareness of the situation to his attention, but to instead realize that she has the upper hand in this situation and to use that knowledge to her own gain. And in the time that she has between finding out and that knowledge being discovered, she enters into business with her sister as a talented interior designer, and she makes for herself a substantial amount of money, earning her the very important financial freedom that she wouldn't have if she were to divorce her philandering husband. A reality for women at the time, which is hugely discussed in this production. And you know what? It's incredibly rewarding to encounter a piece of theatre that can do both things, because to revive a classic comedy like this is. Is something which I enjoy and something which audiences respond to, and it's a bygone era of wit. And, you know, the sensibility of the character is familiar in those that we would go on to see afterwards. She's kind of like very early British Sex and the City almost, or perhaps just a more practical and significantly less intense version of Nora From A Doll's House. And those classics, especially when done well, as this has been, and it has the sort of a style that I have come to expect from a David Pugh production, really continue to have a sparkling charm, but it's even better when they can be infused, when they can be loaded with a real meaning and A weight. And the feminist conversation that this find space for in Laura Wade's new version allows us to rediscover a charming classic and recall its sensibility with nostalgia, but also to have urgent and current conversations at the same time. And I think that's a brilliant thing. This is a piece of theatre that is giving with both hands to multiple generations of theatre goers and that's also represented within the play as well as you have this intergenerational conversation about feminism and about the role of women in society at that time, and what their expectations ought to have been as wives and mothers. And Constance and her sister have slightly different perspectives on this. They have very different perspectives to their mother, Mrs. Culver, played by the glorious Kate Burton. But even her opinion on the placement of women in society evolves and changes through the actions of her daughter and through the respect that she attains for the way that she's navigated this difficult situation in her marriage. Kate Burton, by the way, in a piece of very novel casting, because in a previous version of the Constant wife, seen about 20 years ago on Broadway, she played Constance. Now she's playing her mother, who is a wonderful character for her. She is at the height of her theatrical powers here and we absolutely need to see the likes of her Lady Bracknell in the future. A real genuine treat for me to get to see her on stage. Her delivery of the many scene stealingly ridiculous and comic and withering lines that she is afforded in this material is absolutely perfect. And she does just as much with the likes of a pursed lip or a raised eyebr. An expression of shock. My favourite moment, and I could have died laughing at this, I was just absolutely beside myself, is one in which Constance is considering the possibility of a flirtation with a former suitor who she suspects may still have an affection for her, who is visiting her for the first time in several years, since before she was married and he had attempted to propose to her many, many times. And she, having no idea if during this reunion she will find him attractive or if he will find her to still be attractive, plans with her mother whether or not she ought to leave the two of them alone. And she devises that she will give her some kind of a signal and that they will either change the subject and make him feel awkward so he will leave of his own accord, or she will take a handkerchief and drape it across the piano, the comedy of which is that it transpires to be such an unnatural and odd thing for her to. To do. But the beauty of this joke is that when this happens, and she repeatedly does this more and more determinedly because she really wants to be left alone with this charming man, her mother, Mrs. Culver, is clearly confused and panickedly says to her as she leaves the room, I couldn't remember whether draping the handkerchief meant to stay or to go. And then you kept doing it, which only made me more confused. It was beautiful. It was absolutely hysterical. And it's in a very smoothly, if slightly quaintly directed production that manages to find outrageous moments of comedy as well as really thought provoking exchanges about feminism and what it meant then and what it would go on to mean. There's a lot of metatheatricality around the piece as well. At one point, Constance's sister levels at her the suggestion that her behavior and what she does in response to this situation may in fact be influential for a generation of even more on the nose. At the end of the first act, Constance and her gentleman friend are attempting to leave in order to go to the theatre to go and see a play called, you guessed it, the Constant Wife. And when we return from the interval, they conclude that there's no point in going now because they will have missed the first act. And don't you just hate it when you go and see a play and you come back after the interval and you forget what's happened during the first act? At which point they recap it all for us because we're in exactly the same position. It's very cut. Now, let's carry on, as I tell you, a little bit more about the aspects of this classy production that made it so enjoyable. I want to touch on some of the supporting cast. And Mark Meadows, who already mentioned, portrays Bentley, who is sort of the butler to Constance and her husband, or perhaps he's more of a housekeeper. But he comes to mean much more to that, to Mrs. Middleton, especially after she discovers that her husband has been unfaithful to her and begins to feel more alone in her marriage. Of course, the kids have also left, they've gone to school, so she is feeling more isolated in the household. So she leans on Bentley and confides in him and finds out a little bit more about his personal life as well. And it's a small quantity of material that he has, but there is a great depth of feeling in it. And the fondness and the regard that he has for Mrs. Middleton is very warmly felt from Mark Meadows here. What she finds out is that though she suspects he has been seeing a woman every time he claims to be at his mother's. He has in fact been staying with a lover, but that it is a man. This is not extensively talked about in the play, but it is heavily enough implied, and Constance responds with a sort of implicit allyship which we stan in the 1920s from a wealthy white woman. And we also appreciate this from playwright and adapt Laura Wade, because this feels like a deliberate node to the original playwright W. Somerset Maugham, who secretly led a gay life but wasn't able to depict explicitly queer characters. I don't believe that this was a particularly substantial character in the original play. Certainly I don't think that this was an aspect of his characterization. And this would have been around the time that Oscar Wilde was imprisoned due to revelations about his own identity as revealed through his writing. So, you know, people had to be careful. I also particularly enjoyed Luke Norris as John Middleton, Constance's husband, and Emma McDonald as her friend and John's lover, Mary Louise. And I liked how these two were so.
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- [17:48]
Mickey Jo
Of the era and so tonally in that realm that 1920s vintage comedy, sound and characterization because it was such a great contrast against Rose Leslie's Constance, who was of that world but had these moments of allowing to become a little more three dimensional and almost sort of break out of it as though she could perceive the play that she was contained in and Glimpsed realities beyond the black and white world that the rest of them were still only seeing in black and white. So much so that these two characters in particular could never really understand the multicolored explanations that Constance was providing for her very forward thinking mindset about her marriage and remaining in the marriage and the means by which she was going to broke a peace with her husband and the further lies that she would convince him of in order to allow him to feel no longer guilty for the duration of the time that they would go on to spend together. Incredibly practical of her, but sort of falling on baffled ears to all except her mother with whom she finds a very rewarding understanding from an audience standpoint. Point. And we are going to talk about the wonderful performance by Rose Leslie. But I absolutely have to tell you about how gorgeous these costumes were because I spent so much of this play simply slack jawed like a cartoon with hearts for eyes looking at these vintage 1920s costumes. The pieces were so gorgeous and the color and the geometric shapes and the gloves and the shoes and the pin curled wigs and the vintage clip in the back of the head hair. The details and the fringing. Oh my gosh, there was a coat that Mary Louise put on at one point with these feathered sleeves and just all of the sleeves that were happening. Just wonderful, wonderful sleeves, Such excellent sleeves. And the scarves that some characters were wearing. The double scarf thing that Mrs. Culver had over her shoulders at one point. So, so gorgeous, so characterful. And if we want to talk about characterful costuming and the meaning behind all of this costuming, we can talk about the emancipation of Constance and the way that she is attired when we travel backwards in time. And she believes her marriage to be fine and she's performing her domestic duty and she's returning home from having dropped off her child. And then she finds out that, you know, the rug, the beautiful rug in her beautiful home has been pulled out from underneath her. And the way that she goes on to dress subsequently and we start to see her in like a wide leg legged palazzo pant and just becoming more independent as demonstrated through her clothes and the way that she is dressed towards the very end of the play, not only does it speak to the sort of a more bohemian, free spirited kind of a lifestyle as she prepares to embark on a solo holiday into Europe, though she will convince her husband that she is going to be conducting an affair with a former suitor of hers the entire time. It also feels like she's getting ready to be in fashion for A decade, decade that hasn't arrived yet and yet it's still perfectly of the era. Gorgeous, incredible costuming, Some of my favorite that I've seen in a very long time. And these are the co designs of Anna Fleishchl who also designed the set as well as Cat Fuller. I don't know to what extent these were sourced pieces or newly designed, but incredibly gorgeous. So stylish. I absolutely loved them. But finally then, let's discuss the brilliant performance of leading lady Rose Leslie. We have not seen enough of her on stage. Stage she is fantastic in this remarkably swift with the comic revelations at the comedic climax of the whole thing when everybody finds out just how much she already knew. The biggest punchline of this moment being the way in which she criticizes her husband for having not been more secretive about the affair with her best friend. But it's those moments of humanity that we get to glimpse. It's the contrast between where she ends up and that flashback when she felt was so broken, when she was so uncertain of what she was going to go on to do. Because we've had the opportunity to share that moment of vulnerability and heartbreak with her. And as the whole thing has played out in real time and she's had to adjust to heartbreak and had to compartmentalize and had to form a practical plan for her own self preservation very quickly. We are more so than anyone else in her life, except perhaps Bentley, completely emotionally aligned with her for every subsequent moment of this play. Even as her decisions seem shocking, even as she is portrayed to be acting heartlessly towards her own husband. We're empowered with the understanding of how she has arrived at this particular emotional response. And it's just a really fantastic and layered performance from Rose Leslie. There are brilliant moments a little later on when she is challenged on the way that she is behaving around all of this. Even by those who she expected to understand her, even by her very feminist, very anti marriage sister who would basically much rather she simply divorced the swine. And indeed by her mother who considers this to be just something that women are expected to put up with. In these moments we see that she isn't unemotional. We see the frustration and the pain of it all break through as she advocates for herself in a society stacked against her as a woman. Like I said, a piece of writing which brilliantly gives with both hands. It retains the classic comedy of it all, like a bubbling glass of champagne. But at the bottom of all of that there is a really juicy and substantial piece of fruit. So a Theatrical Bellini, I suppose, is what you could call the constant wife. I thoroughly enjoyed this production. I hope that it goes on to have a future life, if only so that I can go and spend more time looking at those costumes because they were so gorgeous. Now, that brings us to our next conversation in the show that I would see the following evening. And before I tell you all about the context for 448 psychosis, which is a really striking piece of theatre from the late playwright Sarah Kane, I have to warn you that in this discussion inherently, there is going to be much conversation about depression, mental health and suicide. And while none of the above will be discussed in explicit detail, the themes are inextricably linked, linked to the play itself, as well as the wider context of its production. If you don't feel as though that is a beneficial conversation for you to listen to, then I urge you not to. This was an incredibly harrowing piece of theatre. If that doesn't sound like something that you feel capable of going to see, then I would also encourage you to find out more about the content advisory for this piece of theatre. It's really incredibly hard hitting and more so if you gain an insight into the context. If you go in and see this blind, then you will understand the emotional weight of the whole thing, but maybe not to the same extent. And so we have to talk a little bit about the history of448 psychosis, which is very relevant to this particular production because this is not just a new production of the play, it is a reunion of its three original cast members. And they weren't just cast members, they helped to devise the allocation of the play's lines. Because one quality of the this is that there aren't specific characters linked to specific parts of text. It's just an ongoing sort of a long form poem around themes of depression and an inclination towards suicide and the practicality of suicide, as well as the reality of suicide, preventative mental health treatment. But it's basically a long piece of text which, even in this published version here that I'm holding, is not allocated to specific characters. So in that original production, time was spent with the actors figuring out who would do what and who would say what. The whole thing was devised between them with a director. And all of this took place after the death by suicide of the playwright Sarah Kane. This was in the very late 1990s. It would be the year 2000 by the time that the play would be staged at the Royal Court critically, per her wishes. She wanted for it to be seen but the whole thing does sort of play and read like a suicide note. And yet it's also much more beyond that. That's what it was compared to at the time by the prolific theatre critic Michael Billington, who asked in his review, how do you award aesthetic points to what is functionally a suicide note? The answer to that question, I think, is that it has to be done in context, especially for a production like this, which is nodding to the original context. That first production was produced in the context of and in the shadow of Sarah's death by suicide. And so is this one, by reuniting the cast 25 years on. And before I tell you a little bit more about the show itself, Sarah passed away when she was in her late 20s, I believe, which as a 29 year old myself, getting ready to turn 30, feels entirely shocking to grapple with. I dare say these cast members must all have been around that same age, age at that time, now doing it 25 years older. And of course I didn't see that original production. I was five years old. There is a sort of a morbid sense, at least that's what I took from it, of these actors, because they are speaking lines and delivering thoughts and emotional ideas which were clearly so personal to Sarah Kane, they feel almost representative of versions of her who survived the mental health crisis that she was experiencing, only to feel with the same acute depression, the same suicidal tendencies 25 years later into their lives. Simply and perhaps crudely put, it felt almost like watching a trio of depictions of Sarah Kane, who had lived to be 25 years older and still just as profoundly desperate to end her own life, which is a really staggering thing to try and come to terms with now. The material itself is non narrative. It's almost more like a cacophony of separate, isolated, intrusive thoughts. Thoughts. And I believe there's some connection to the kind of thoughts that arise in a moment of emotional clarity experienced at 4:48am Some of these link to a particular unnamed individual, a prior romantic partner and regrets about that relationship. Others are more specific around mental health treatment and the side effects of that experience. As a playwright, as someone whose work depends on the full extent of their emotional capacity. There were other sections of text that I felt may have been inspired specifically by sort of prescribed coping mechanisms for depression, for suicidal tendencies. There were moments of counting back from a hundred in multiples of various different numbers, as well as a great many abstract poetic musings on sorrow and the possibility of death. And the three actors on stage perform with this really blistering vulnerability, a whole spectrum of sorrow incorporating rage, incorporating a sort of colder frustration, incorporating regret and impatience. And.
- [28:54]
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- [29:41]
Mickey Jo
This very emotionally exhausted, sad quality there is, unsurprisingly, a powerfully heavy quality to the whole thing, but it is, aside from anything else, a real masterclass in depth of acting and characterisation. One of the performers on stage is co artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, Daniel Evans, co artistic director, I should add, with Tamara Harvey, who was the director of the last play that we just spoke about. He was joined by other original cast members, Joe McInnes, who I gather now works more often as a director, and Madeline Potter, who I've had the joy of seeing before on stage at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. All three of them utterly brilliant and so closely connected on stage as a chorus, despite very infrequently engaging with each other physically via eye contact or in exchanges of dialogue. And I believe as well that this is largely the same creative team who have also reunited from the original production, that is director James McDonald, designer Jeremy Herbert, lighting designer Nigel Edwards and sound designer Paul Arditi. And it's real pin drop sound design. The lighting is harsh, unforgiving and exposing, achieving the sort of equality of like a police interrogation room. And I think I also get the sense of that because what limited set there is on stage includes a very basic white table and a couple of chairs and a tilted mirror reflecting the performance space, but also the first few rows of the audience. It's at sort of not really 45 degrees, more like 55, 60 degrees to the stage. And most powerfully used at the end of the production when director James McDonald has the three actors lying on the floor, the full emotional spectrum of their performances via facial expression and their delivery being visible to all of Us via the mirror above, achieving I think, this quality of helplessness, of this utter depletion of emotional and physical energy as they simply read these very empty lines with more and more empty space between each utterance, but also visually familiar of those moments before sleep and also those moments before death, making the whole thing as harrowing to look at visually as it is to consider emotionally. And there's one more powerful visual in store. This is a spoiler alert for the final moment of the play and one that I read about about the original production. And I think you have to consider the weight of that original production which would have taken place months after Sarah Kane's death and the implications of the whole thing would be very powerfully understood and. And there'd have been such a heaviness to the whole thing. There still is. And that could only have been so, so much greater at the time, back in the year 2000. And this was staged upstairs at the Royal Court in their smaller space. And at the very end of the whole thing, after sharing this room, they opened, I think a sort of a skylight in the Royal Court and light came in and the sound of the traffic and the world outside. An experience which I've heard characterized as a reminder of the ongoing world. And this particular production was restaged at the Royal Court before also transferring to the rsc, it being a co pro between the two venues. And I think they did that once again at the Royal Court. The way that they did it here at the RSC is they opened doors to the side of the playing space. This was staged at the other place, one of the RSC's multiple venues, and they had light coming through that way and I think pre recorded noise of traffic and just sort of outside goings on. But it's a very interesting final mood among the audience that this play leaves you with. It's not an immediate breaking into applause because there's so much contemplation and the whole thing feels so terrifyingly real that we can't possibly begin to clap until the actors return into the space and then bow. I spoke to a friend about this who wondered if they were simply going to forego the curtain call, which I think would be a very powerful choice. I think at the time of the original production it was probably necessary to relieve the tension of the whole thing and I think it is now as well. I think for a production that's maybe a little more removed from the personal, with it not being the same three actors reprising their performances, that might be an interesting choice, but it is, to repeat the same adjective, an utterly harrowing piece of theatre. Hugely hard hitting, incredibly emotional, and only more so when you consider the extraordinary context of this particular production. I feel incredibly grateful and privileged to have had a chance to see this performance. I think it's really important part of theatre history. I have not seen enough Sarah Kane in my lifetime and it has made me determined to. For now, though, those have been my thoughts on the two plays that I saw earlier this week at the rsc. In the past, where I have reviewed two different productions in parallel, I have tried to find ways to bring the two together and find similarities and crossover in their themes and their ideas and they are such disparate pieces of theatre that I really didn't find too much to talk about here. But both really brilliant pieces of theatre. Very much worth seeing if you are local to the Royal Shakespeare Company or if either of them go on to have future life wherever you are. In the meantime, I hope that you've enjoyed listening to my thoughts. If you've had the chance to see either of these, as mentioned before, I would love to know what you thought. Let me know in the comments section down below. And I hope that you enjoyed and that everyone is staying safe and that you have a stagey day. For 10 more seconds, I'm Mickey Jo Theatre. Oh my God. Hey, thanks for watching. Have a stagey day. Subscribe.
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