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  • Home
  • Archive
    • 2020- >
      • The Absence Of War
      • Funny Money
      • A Frightful Evening
      • The Ghost Train
      • Jekyll & Hyde
      • Ladies Down Under
      • The Last Quiz Night On Earth
      • A Legal Murder
      • Silver Lining
      • Steaming
      • Underground
      • The Western Approaches
    • 2010-19 >
      • 1 Flat 3 Stories
      • Abandonment
      • Animal Farm
      • Carrington VC
      • A Christmas Carol
      • The Country Wife
      • Crown Matrimonial
      • Easy Virtue
      • Fawlty Towers 2013
      • Fawlty Towers 2015
      • Feed the Beast
      • FlatSpin
      • Hello, Is There Any Body There?
      • The Hollow
      • Ladies Day
      • A Lady Mislaid
      • La Musica & Perfect Partners
      • Love In A Mist
      • Maskerade
      • Misfits
      • Much Ado About Nothing
      • Nobody's Perfect
      • NSFW
      • The Railway Children
      • Salt
      • Sauce For The Goose
      • Six Characters In Search Of An Author
      • This Happy Breed
      • The Thrill of Love
      • Visiting Hour
      • A Wedding Story
      • Wind in the Willows Chelsfield
      • Wind in the Willows Edinburgh
    • 2000-09 >
      • Arsenic and Old Lace
      • Black Comedy
      • Cemetery Club
      • A Chorus Of Disapproval
      • Daisy Pulls It Off
      • Dangerous Corner
      • Fear and Fancy
      • Garden
      • A Ghost On Tiptoe
      • Hobsons Choice
      • House
      • The Importance of Being Earnest
      • Intimate Exchanges
      • Lady Windermeres Fan
      • Loot
      • Lucky Sods
      • Mars & Venus
      • The Merry Wives Of Windsor
      • A Midsummer Night’s Dream
      • Murder In Company
      • My Three Angels
      • New Directions
      • Over My Dead Body
      • Our Country’s Good
      • Out Of Focus
      • Party Piece
      • Proscenophobia
      • Ring Round The Moon
      • The Rivals
      • Steel Magnolias
      • Stepping Out
      • Strictly Murder
    • 1990-99 >
      • Bedroom Farce
      • Blithe Spirit
      • California Suite
      • Deadly Nightcap
      • Dial M For Murder
      • Dick Turpin
      • Gosforths Fete
      • Hay Fever
      • An Inspector Calls
      • The Late Edwina Black
      • Lord Arthur Saviles Crime
      • Miranda
      • Move Over Mrs Markham
      • Not Now, Darling
      • Pleasures And Perils
      • Round And Round The Garden
      • Seasons Greetings
      • Some Confusions
      • Something To Hide
      • Tartuffe
      • Time And Time Again 1993
      • Time And Time Again 1999
      • Time, Murderer, Please
      • Tons Of Money
      • The Weekend
      • When One Door Closes
      • The Woman In White
    • 1980-89 >
      • Anastasia
      • The Barretts Of Wimpole Street
      • The Brontes
      • Busybody
      • Caught Napping
      • A Friend Indeed
      • Full Treatment
      • Gaslight
      • Mother Goose
      • Murder In Company
      • Nightmare
      • Outside Edge
      • Pink String And Sealing Wax
      • Pygmalion
      • Rape Of The Belt
      • Relative Values
      • Return To Victoria
      • Separate Tables
      • Shut Your Eyes and Think of England
      • Suddenly at Home
      • A Tomb With A View
      • Treasure Hunt
      • When We Are Married
    • 1970-79 >
      • The Aspern Papers
      • Brush With A Body
      • The Chiltern Hundreds
      • The Circle
      • Dandy Dick
      • Dear Charles
      • Fish Out Of Water
      • The House Of Bernada Alba
      • The House On The Cliff
      • An Ideal Husband
      • Ladies In Retirement
      • A Letter From The General
      • The Matchmaker
      • The Rivals
      • The Royal Pardon
      • The Schoolmistress
      • Shadow In The Sun
      • Someone Waiting
      • Spiders Web
      • They Came To A City
      • Wanted: One Body
    • 1960-69 >
      • 1066 And All That
      • Aladdin
      • Antigone and The Critic
      • As You Like It
      • Billy Liar
      • The Bread Winner
      • Breath Of Spring
      • Charleys Aunt
      • A Christmas Carol
      • Cinderella 1965
      • Dick Whittington
      • Flowering Cherry
      • Frost At Midnight
      • Hay Fever
      • The Hollow
      • The House By The Lake
      • Macbeth
      • Man Alive
      • The Merchant Of Venice
      • Midsummer Mink
      • A Midsummer Nights Dream
      • Pantomime 1960
      • The Pen of My Aunt, The Women Have Their Way
      • The Pleasure Garden
      • Pygmalion
      • Rookery Nook
      • The Taming Of The Shrew
      • Tobias and the Angel
      • Twelfth Night
      • Waters Of The Moon
      • The Young Elizabeth
    • 1950-59 >
      • After October
      • The Browning Version, Elegant Edward
      • By Candlelight
      • Count Your Blessings
      • Eden End
      • Grand National Night
      • The Happy Prisoner
      • The Holly And The Ivy
      • The Late Christopher Bean
      • Libel
      • Martine
      • Our Town
      • The Queen and the Rebels
      • Thunder Rock
      • Young Wives Tale
    • 1936-49 >
      • Early 1940s plays
      • 20th Century Lullaby
      • And So To Bed
      • Berkeley Square
      • Cinderella
      • The Corn Is Green
      • Dangerous Corner
      • Distinguished Gathering
      • Duet For Two Hands
      • Elegant Edward (1940s)
      • The Ghost Train
      • Hassan
      • The Importance Of Being Earnest
      • Love From A Stranger
      • The Middle Watch
      • New 66 And All That
      • Night Must Fall
      • Noah
      • Pinocchio
      • The Rivals
      • Roberts Wife
      • This Happy Breed
    • Our History
    • Popular Playwrights
  • Join Us
    • JimSlips
    • Links >
      • Newsletter
    • Get In Touch

The Circle

by Somerset Maugham; producer Harold Hart
Picture
Picture
Anne Finn (Allocca), David Finn, Peter Robertson
27-29 November 1975
The prim Arnold is dreading the first visit of his mother, Lady Catherine Champion-Cheney, and her partner, Lord Porteus. She had caused scandal by eloping with Porteus thirty years earlier, leaving her husband and only child. Arnold’s wife, Elizabeth, is looking forward to meeting Catherine, whom she sees as a romantic figure for sacrificing her social position in England for the sake of love.

In reality, Catherine hates being rejected by polite society, dresses and makes up too young for her years and regards her partner as “simply a testy, crotchety old gentleman who makes himself a nuisance at the bridge table”. Nonetheless, they remain bound together by reluctant affection. Their visit is complicated by the unexpected arrival of Arnold’s father, the deserted Clive Champion-Cheney.

Elizabeth is tempted to repeat history by eloping with Edward Luton, a friend of her husband, aware that in doing so she would be sacrificing a comfortable life in England for the probable hardships of life as a planter’s wife in Malaya. Arnold, to whom she confesses her emotions, gives her his blessing to leave him if she wishes. This calculated ploy, suggested to him by his father, makes her feel so guilty that she almost resolves to end her relationship with Edward, but the latter tells her candidly that he offers her love and not necessarily happiness. This decides her in his favour, and Porteus and Lady Catherine lend them their car to elope in.

Clive, unaware that his ploy has failed, joins Porteus and Catherine, boasts of his clever plan, and the play ends with “all three in fits of laughter”.
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