The Royal Shakespeare Company’s reimagined version of 100-year-old comedy The Constant Wife includes contemporary music by Jamie Cullum to give it a modern twist. The move is all part of a deliberate ploy to cross borders and expand audiences, explains the show’s director, Tamara Harvey...

A new version of W Somerset Maugham’s ‘comedy of ill manners’, The Constant Wife, comes to the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Swan Theatre this month, with a number of modern touches - including a contemporary musical score by jazz superstar Jamie Cullum - designed to give it a fresh feel as well as appeal to a wider audience.

Director Tamara Harvey, also the RSC’s co-artistic director, says the new elements sit naturally with a play she believes was ahead of its time when first performed in 1926, not least due to the strengths and attitude of its titular heroine Constance, who defies societal norms to carry on regardless in the wake of her husband’s infidelities.

Tamara admits she was “immediately excited” when the new adaptation by Olivier Award-winning playwright Laura Wade landed in her inbox.

“When I read it, I was just struck by how astonishing it was,” she says. “Partly, this was Laura’s version, but there’s a lot that’s the original Somerset Maugham, and I think it must have been astonishingly modern in its thinking 100 years ago. It’s really quite radical. Constance just refuses to be dictated to by anyone - she’s gonna forge her own way and make her own choices.”

Despite its contemporary attitude, Tamara has resisted setting the play in the present day, saying it works best as a period drama.

“We’re still very much in 1926, but I think the thing that Laura has done so brilliantly is that she’s absolutely held on to the spirit of the original - and even found her way into the language of it. She’s definitely channelled Maugham and the brilliant comedy of manners and wit of that age, but she’s also given it a couple of new scenes, and there are moments where we lift the veil a bit. As you’re watching it, you won’t know where Somerset Maugham ends and Laura Wade begins.”

A key element of the revitalised show is the musical score by Jamie Cullum - how had that come about?

“[Producer] David Pugh and I were discussing composers and the need to find someone who could achieve the same musically as Laura has achieved with the text, which is to absolutely let it have its foot in the 1920s but still have a kind of contemporary flare. We were talking through names, and Jamie Cullum just instantly felt like a brilliant idea.”

Something instantly clicked with the musician, too.

“Jamie told me that the morning after he read the script, he woke up humming a tune. He studied theatre at university, so he understands it and has friends from that time who work in theatre now, so it’s always been something he’s interested in and had a love for.”

The play has clearly inspired him - but has his involvement and music inspired the director, in terms of how she adapts the show to make the most of the score?

“Oh yeah, absolutely. He was with us the first day we were doing the read-through, and that bubbled up a load more ideas. He’s just been the most wonderful collaborator - we’re sending voice notes back and forth and having conversations about how the music might weave through. It’s what you hope every creative collaboration will be, which is a continual conversation.”

Does having such a well-known performer involved bring any pressure - conscious or subconscious - to make more of the music than she otherwise would have?

“One of the things that’s really wonderful about working with Jamie - and we found the same working with Thom Yorke on Hamlet Hail To The Thief [Shakespeare meets Radiohead, also at the RSC this month] - is that these are music superstars who also really understand the process of creating something and what it is to be collaborating. There isn’t any sense of ego or ‘you must use my music’; it’s really a case of finding the best way of telling the story. Sometimes that’ll mean more music and sometimes it’ll mean less.”

Speaking of which, superstar musical collaborators seem like buses - one minute there are none, and now the RSC has two at once! It’s clearly something Tamara believes can gain attention and attract new audiences, but is there also a fear that some people might see it as a cynical move or even a bit gimmicky?

“One of the things Daniel [Evans, co-artistic director] and I talk about is the role that theatre has to play in crossing borders. Sometimes that’s reaching across international borders, sometimes that’s collaborating with artists from other cultures and other nations, and sometimes it’s reaching across the borders between different art forms, whether that’s working with musicians, dancers or artists, whatever it might be. There’s a real role that we have to play in the arts that is about collaboration and being inspired by people who look at the world differently.

“It’s something that we’ve purposely sought out, these collaborations across different art forms. It’s wonderful when people who, for example, are huge Radiohead fans, through that find a way into Shakespeare. I also hope there are people who are Jamie Cullum fans who will find a way into the Swan Theatre. So it’s not cynical, but it is deliberate.”

The Constant Wife is also likely to appeal to wider audiences courtesy of its casting. The show marks the long-awaited return to the stage of Rose Leslie, a familiar face from TV roles in the likes of Downton Abbey, Game Of Thrones and Vigil. Was she someone the director had purposely sought out for the role?

“Oh absolutely we sought her out. I first saw Rose in a play when she was just out of drama school, and I can still remember thinking, gosh she’s luminous. She’s someone I’ve always wanted to work with and watched with delight as her career has blossomed.

“Reading this play, she was the person who sprang to mind because she’s got such a brilliant combination of wit and aptitude with language, and yet she’s also got a real complexity of depth to her - you always feel as though the waters run very deep. That was the perfect combination for this role.”
The combination of an old-fashioned parlour-style comedy and the onset of summer feels like an appropriate one, too.

“That’s absolutely right. I always think comedy of manners are a bit like Oscar Wilde – they feel like a glass of Champagne. Perfect for the summer!”

The Constant Wife shows at the RSC’s Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon from Friday 20 June to Saturday 2 August

By Steve Adams