Home and Beauty

The play depicts a young woman who has remarried after her first husband was missing, presumed dead, in the First World War.

The novelist and playwright W. Somerset Maugham had his first great theatrical success in 1907 with a comedy, Lady Frederick, and by the following year he had four plays running simultaneously in the West End.

[2] The West End production was presented by Frank Curzon and Gladys Cooper at the Playhouse Theatre, London, under the title of Home and Beauty, on 30 August 1919 (235 performances).

She suggests that the two couples might have adjacent rooms and make a foursome at bridge, but Raham warns that this might savour of collusion and invalidate the claim of adultery.

[8] A revival at the Playhouse in 1942, directed by Val Gielgud with Isabel Jeans, Barry Jones and Ronald Squire, as Victoria and her two husbands ran for only 12 performances.

Later in the run Benjamin Whitrow took over the role of Frederick, and Lowe was succeeded first by Bernard Bresslaw and then by Laurence Olivier.

In The New York Times, Alexander Woollcott called it "a new and delightful farce ... an evening of unalloyed amusement", although he doubted if its very English wit would appeal to every member of an American audience.

[12] The West End production was enthusiastically reviewed in The Times: "One is tempted to call Mr Maugham’s farce exquisite.

[15] By the time of the 1942 revival, The Stage was more kindly disposed to the piece: "Home and Beauty is a model of discretion in handling a delicate theme and of ingenuity in construction, while much of the dialogue has the quiet distinction and wit that one expects from its author".

[17] This also troubled Michael Billington, reviewing the 2002 revival in The Guardian: "Although Somerset Maugham dubbed his 1919 play 'a farce' it is actually a misogynist comedy dipped in vitriol".

[10] The Stage now found the play "enormous fun especially when Maugham gives the set-up a delightful comic spin – neither husband wants to draw the short straw of being married to Victoria".