The Constant Wife

Sorry to be late getting this post um, you know, posted. Ironically enough, I'm late at least in part because my (not-so-constant) wife is out of town on a birthday trip with our eldest, leaving me to hold down the fort. Fort has not floated away yet but the weekend is young.

I've heard this play compared to an Aaron Sorkin TV show, which is also a bit ironic given my recent mention of Studio 60 on Sunset Strip. Which, because it's late and my mind wanders, reminds me that there was an episode of Picket Fences that I saw years ago while I was traveling -- it was totally out of context because I never really watched the show -- that featured just four of the show's characters and it was so tightly plotted and the dialogue was so great and it all took place in one house in two rooms that I thought it would have made a killer play. But I never found out what the name of the specific episode was so I guess that's one piece of potential theater lost for the ages.

Anyway, did you know that W. Somerset Maugham wrote more than 20 plays between 1907 and 1933, and at one point had four running simultaneously in London? But that he turned away from theater after the 1933 flop Sheppey, and although he lived until 1965, he never lifted his pen as a playwright again. What a shame.

This play ran on Broadway last year and from what I remember, got fair to pretty good reviews. I'm not sure why it only ran for three months. The Richmond production is getting a somewhat last minute addition of Steve Perigard to the cast. I have never witnessed the process of a director directing himself as an actor. It seems to be the kind of thing that could make you schizophrenic. Or something. Is it really 1am? Man, gotta go to bed. Night, night, Richmond.