We sat down with Laura Wade, Playwright for our production of The Constant Wife, based on the play by W. Somerset Maugham, to talk about her process of adaptation, the play’s enduring relevance and which character she thinks is ‘the one to watch’.
1. Firstly, how did this whole project come about?
The amazing theatre producer David Pugh – who commissioned my adaptation of Jane Austen’s The Watsons – contacted me. He has good instincts, so when he brings something to me I’m always interested. He thought The Constant Wife was worth reviving but wanted a 21st-century female playwright to give the story a modern remix.
Once I’d read it, I grabbed the chance with both hands. Constance is a brilliant character ‒ her brain works in such an interesting and surprising way, and it’s fascinating to see how she works through her situation.
2. You’ve known Tamara Harvey for a long time, and most recently worked together on your hugely successful play, Home, I’m Darling. How did you end up working on this together?
We are always looking for reasons/excuses to work together! With this production, though, it was David who quietly sent Tamara the play, and she could immediately see it in the Swan Theatre. She felt it would fit beautifully: being so intimately in that space with Constance would only make the play more delicious.
3. Did you know the play before you started working on it?
I loved it straight away, but I'd never come across it before. To my shame, I wasn't really familiar with W. Somerset Maugham’s plays.
One good thing about adapting something that isn’t well known is that you have more creative freedom, particularly in terms of people’s expectations. When you work on something really famous, you imagine that people are going to be up in arms about what you've done to their favourite story.
Part of the gesture of an adaptation like this is to say: "Look at this amazing thing we’ve found." I really enjoy bringing these rediscovered treasures in front of an audience.
4. W. Somerset Maugham was such a prolific writer, but he's not as well-known as other early 20th century playwrights. Why do you think that is?
I suspect the plays, just like with Terence Rattigan, fell out of favour when all that angry new energy emerged in the 1950s. Some of Rattigan’s plays are now important parts of the canon, but Maugham’s haven’t quite had their ‘moment’. They're worth our time, though, because (like with Noël Coward) the writing is so elegant and finely tooled on the surface, but there's such a deep well of feeling underneath.
Maugham’s original play is so fecund and feminist and rich already, so we’ve just slightly polished up those aspects of it for modern audiences. We’ve tried to do it subtly ‒ it shouldn’t be like a game where you're trying to work out which bits are mine and which bits are Maugham’s. I’ve just tried to make it more itself.
Adapting Playwright Laura Wade (left) and Director Tamara Harvey (right) during the first day of rehearsals for The Constant Wife, 2025.
5. This feels like it fits so well into Daniel and Tamara’s tenure at the RSC, which is partially defined by ‘reframing’ classic plays for a modern audience - was that a consideration for you when adapting The Constant Wife?
Yes, it’s about seeing an existing play from a slightly different angle, turning a different face of it to the light. Modern audiences are so used to the idea of things existing in different versions. For example, different people can play Batman, but he's still Batman – all the versions become part of the same thought cloud. I think that's brilliant.
It’s creatively very freeing, because you don't feel like you're trampling on something: the original is still there. Someone could pick up Maugham’s The Constant Wife and stage it tomorrow. But it's great to be able to play with it, and allow the audience's responses to be playful as well.
6. You've adapted novels for stage, and recently for television with Jilly Cooper’s Rivals. Could you describe your process of adapting?
On a very basic level, when you're adapting something, the question you're answering is how a thing happens rather than what happens. You’re freed from the pressure of working out what the story is.
I also love the craft of moving a story from one medium to another. The Constant Wife is the first time I've adapted play-to-play, although the process felt similar: distilling what the play is and focusing in on the themes that I find most exciting.
A novelist can tell you exactly what someone is feeling but, on stage, it's all got to be about action and language. It’s about finding different ways to tell the story. It can also be about deciding what you’re going to tell. Jilly Cooper’s Rivals is a hefty book - it's a couple of inches thick. Tipping the Velvet, which I worked on years ago, was a similar length. You can't tell everything, so you have to choose your approach. You might have to make bold or harsh choices about what you're going to include and what you're not. It's a process of distilling the essence of the story and then adding in something of your own. Otherwise, what’s the point? It’s just the same thing again.
I’ve made some practical changes. I’ve combined a couple of characters. In the original play, there’s Martha (Constance’s sister) and also Barbara, an interior designer, who invites Constance to work with her. There is no reason for them to be different people. Combining them has made Martha's character richer. It also felt worthwhile to boost Bentley the butler’s character, because in the original he just brings people in and out of the room. I thought, well, let's make that a role worth somebody playing. We don’t want any tissue-paper characters – everybody has a full life. That also feels like a difference in terms of what we want from a play now, as opposed to what people expected from a play in the 1920s.
Tamara Harvey (Director), Rose Leslie (Constance) and Laura Wade (Adapting Playwright) meet for the first day of rehearsals for the The Constant Wife, 2025.
7. When you started adapting Maugham’s play, were there any key changes that immediately struck you?
There were two big things. Firstly, I felt like we could get to the heart of the matter quicker, so I moved the discovery of the infidelity closer to the beginning.
I also wanted to use the space that this freed up to be more forensic about how Constance responds to knowing the secret. In the scene where the infidelity is exposed to everyone, Constance copes with such aplomb. But I had a hunch that she might have some very complex feelings about it, and that those were worth taking the time to dig into.
8. The play highlights the difference that economic freedom made to the lives of women in the early 20th century. Does it feel like this is still a timely issue?
Absolutely. When Maugham wrote the play, women’s right to vote and the passing of the Women's Property Act were recent history. But we're still in this situation today where women are often at a financial disadvantage in their relationships, and can lose pensions, savings, careers simply by having children. The play is a real rallying cry for having a running-away fund.
When we meet Constance, she is in a situation that she can't afford to leave. She changes the dynamic of her life by going out and earning money. Like in Jane Austen’s novels, finance is a key theme of the play, as big as any question of love.
9. The production team for The Constant Wife is very female-led. How is that experience for you?
Brilliant ‒ I haven't seen a man in weeks! Tamara and Anna Fleischle (Set and Co-Costume Designer) are my work family. One of the privileges of working with people a number of times – while also scooping up new people along the way – is having that shorthand with each other. We can bring what we've learnt together on past projects into the next one.
It’s wonderful to work with people that you admire so much. One of the things I always say about Anna – and of course it’s only one of her many skills – is that she is great at wallpaper. I've never met anybody who is as good at putting wallpaper on stage. She creates rooms that you really believe characters live in, but are simultaneously heightened, bold and metaphorically rich.
BEHIND THE SCENES OF THE CONSTANT WIFE
10. Aside from Constance, is there another character in the play that you identify with?
I think Bentley, the butler. When he brings someone into the room, he changes the course of the action in a way that feels similar to my job. It’s both his job and mine to give the characters what they need.
There’s one point in the play where Bentley takes a night off and something seismic happens. It can feel like that when you're writing – you leave your desk for a minute, and all hell breaks loose. It was lovely to expand his character and acknowledge the role that he plays in the family. He’s one to watch.
11. Finally, what do you hope audiences will take away from this production?
So much of the play is universal: how we behave in relationships, and what we demand from each other as spouses, partners and friends. I hope audiences will walk out of the play debating what they’d do in that same situation. Would you approach it differently to Constance?
As a writer, I like work that asks more questions than it answers, so what I’d really like is that audiences would still be talking about it as they walk out of the theatre, over dinner or drinks, on the walk home. I hope it sparks debate about the choices Constance makes.
