30 June 2025
Like many of the audience at the Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon last Saturday, we had bought tickets for the new RSC production of ‘The Constant Wife’ in order to see the Royal Shakespeare Company debut of the TV actor Rose Leslie (Game of Thrones, Downton Abbey, Vigil). So we were initially disappointed, as we entered the theatre, to see a sign saying “Due to the indisposition of Rose Leslie, the role of Constance will be played by Jessica Nesling”. But, in the tradition of many Broadway musicals, this proved to be a great opportunity for the understudy to shine. Jess Nesling seemed to fit the part of Constance like an elegant long evening glove. Laura Wade’s new version of ‘The Constant Wife’, based on the 1926 play by W Somerset Maugham, is a very clever, understated, feminist exploration of the difference economic freedom made to the lives of women in the early twentieth century. On the surface it is an old-fashioned drawing-room play, and Laura Wade preserves most of the format and plot of the original, with only a couple of subtle changes. But the themes feel much more contemporary, and a little knowing meta-textual breaking of the fourth wall keeps it from feeling like a museum-piece without damaging the integrity of the play. Tamara Harvey’s production has a great set by Anna Fleischle which manages to be both realistic and slightly exaggerated. There is original music composed for the show by Jamie Cullum and the period costumes, by Anna Fleischle and Cat Fuller, are beautiful. The cast were all strong but Jess Nesling, who was in almost every scene, fitted the calm, careful, determined ingenuity of Constance perfectly - the actor, like her character, doing things her way.