Miles Malleson’s 1933 drama is a reminder that polyamory existed long before it became a trendy term for today’s throuples. The play’s central interwar couple, happily married for eight years, are taking a shot at it.
We meet them just as Stephen (Guy Lewis) is losing his lust for life. Anne (Laura Doddington) urges him to sow his oats further afield, which he does rather quickly with the recently widowed, albeit suddenly available, Diana (Keisha Atwell), who just happens to be visiting.
If it were not for the period setting and the actors’ clipped RP, Stephen and Anne’s relationship, rocked by jealousy through the course of the play, could be that of gen Zers, negotiating non-exclusive relationships. The difference is that this couple is upper middle-class and middle-aged.
Directed by Jonathan Bank, the production has a period drawing room design by Alex Marker that gives it a twee, creaky feel but it requires this historical setting, to some degree, because Malleson’s drama comes disguised as a comedy of manners. There is some schematic plotting in the couple’s triangulations, along with the presence of Stephen’s pious father (Tony Timberlake), who could be one of Somerset Maugham’s repressed men of the cloth and brings laughs through his goggle-eyed outrage at Stephen’s infidelity.
But those laughs give way to psychologically searching discussions on the conditions of monogamy, the nature of jealousy, generosity in marriage and the notion that if you love someone, why wouldn’t you want them to carry on enriching their lives with extramarital fun and games?
These interrogations are prolonged and run the risk of becoming leaden but are carried off smoothly and hold a ring of truth (Malleson himself had an open marriage). The play’s discursiveness renders it static but it stays engaging despite this and the awkward mix of frothy comedy and serious probing.
Doddington gives a standout performance, torn between her love for Stephen and her jealousy. It looks like we are heading into a sad ending for this marriage but polyamorous life is left hanging in the balance.
At Jermyn Street theatre, London, until 1 July.
