The Roundabout's Constant Wife Extends Through August 21

News By Broadway.com Staff July 20, 2005 - 1:04PM

Kate Burton
& Lynn Redgrave in
The Constant Wife

About the Show

The Roundabout Theatre Company is extending its production of W. Somerset Maugham's The Constant Wife by one week. The production is now set to run at the American Airlines through August 21.

The Constant Wife is a social comedy of marital maneuvers in 1920s upper class London. Constance Middleton Kate Burton discovers that her husband Michael Cumpsty is having an affair with her best friend Kathryn Meisle. Rather than humiliating herself and others, she denies the affair, defends the two, and sets about turning bad luck, unfaithful friends, local gossip and a broken heart to her own advantage. This production also stars John Dossett, Lynn Redgrave, Enid Graham, Denis Homes, John Ellison Conlee and Kathleen McNenney.

The Constant Wife, directed by Mark Brokaw, opened on June 16 to mostly positive reviews. Edward Karam in his Broadway.com Review wrote: "This comedy of manners revels in long sentences, subordinate clauses, and punctilious grammar, and the cast navigates it all with great aplomb, keeping the emotional truth to the fore. Burton conveys resilience and common sense along with a glowing sexuality. Kathryn Meisle, who looks like a young Glynis Johns, is scattered and endearing as the dim Marie-Louise. Michael Cumpsty is a fine bourgeois husband, and John Dossett as the stoically lovelorn suitor embodies virile decency under a veneer of dullness."