Fossil Pit

By T.E. Kalem

THE CONSTANT WIFE by SOMERSET MAUGHAM

When it comes to the stage, Ingrid Bergman dotes on second-rate plays. In recent years she has appeared in inferior O'Neill (More Stately Mansions), hand-me-down Shaw (Captain Brassbound's Conversion), and now in fossilized Maugham. Bergman has treated each of these dilapidated vehicles as if it were the Queen's own royal barouche wheeling through the gates of Buckingham Palace. Indeed, Elizabeth II would not fault Bergman's acting technique--a tilt of the head, a flash of a smile and the wave of a hand.

In The Constant Wife, Bergman is Constance Middleton, an amiable, idle woman who plays hostess to life in a well-appointed drawing room. Her husband John (Jack Gwillim) is a prosperous Harley Street surgeon who is having an affair with Constance's best friend, a blonde married flibbertigibbet. Omniscient as Sherlock Holmes and calmative as Candida, Constance knows all about it and does not wish to be told. But friends will tell.

What ensues is not outrage, vituperation or divorce, but smug Shavian homilies on the double standard and the right of women to economic self-determination. Incontestable Constance takes a job as an interior decorator and decamps for a six-week fling with an ardent old beau.

The becalmed drama stirs fitfully with a few clever lines, but only one member of the cast, Brenda Forbes, as Constance's mother, delivers those with any style. Since Maugham wrote the play, half a century has passed, and passed it sadly by.

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