Yours Unfaithfully – Jermyn Street Theatre, London

Writer: Miles Malleson

Director: Jonathan Bank

It all shapes up as very familiar. Classic three-act structure? Check. Beautifully dressed box sets? Check, and one of them is a drawing room. Cut glass English accents? Check. It’s very much Somerset Maugham country; it’s not as witty as Coward, but the dialogue is crisp and the actors play their scenes like long tennis rallies, and the men are ferociously keen on cricket. But it all gets a little bit surprising when the subject of discussion turns to open marriage, to having illicit affairs with the partner’s full knowledge. And their discussions are frank and honest, and there is no attempt to suggest that it’s easy, or that they don’t get hurt and jealous, or that it doesn’t endanger relationships.

Miles Malleson was a passionate supporter of the Soviet Revolution. Miles Malleson wrote a number of plays with strong Socialist messages, Miles Malleson was quite famous, but now he’s almost forgotten, apart from his appearance as Canon Chasuble, Margaret Rutherford’s love interest, in Anthony Asquith’s The Importance of Being Earnest. Yours Unfaithfully’s director, Jonathan Bank, is passionate about re-discovering lost plays like this. His company, the Mint Theater Company, has revived more than 60 lost or neglected plays, and he hopes the quality of the pieces he re-stages will persuade audiences that forgotten plays often don’t deserve to be forgotten. He thinks circumstance and blind chance are as significant as lack of quality in removing plays from The Canon, and the relevance and wit of Yours Unfaithfully makes his case well.

The acting opportunities for all five cast members are notable; Tony Timberlake has a very telling cameo as a cricket-loving priest who tries to balance disapproval of his son’s infidelity with being a loving parent. He doesn’t have much time to make that conflict real, but he manages superbly. Keisha Atwell is the new love interest, and her main job is to look glamorous and alluring, which she does and is. There is nuance, however. There is loneliness and sadness in her reading of the character that goes beyond the up-for-it-pretty-widow that would have served the plot. Dominic Marsh has the unenviable role of confidant – solid support for his best mate, and solid affection for his best mate’s wife with whom he had a brief but happy affair though that’s all in the past. He gets to be the other half of a lot of conversations in which his friends work through doubts and moral dilemmas. It’s more of a plot function than a character, but Marsh is engaging and sympathetic.

The heart of the play is the fraught relationship of Anne and Stephen, played by Laura Doddington and Guy Lewis. Lewis plays a man intent on having and eating his cake, simultaneously having the goodness to worry about his wife’s emotional well-being while not doing much about it. He isn’t an altogether sympathetic character, though his ideas and ideals are well articulated. Laura Doddington is immense. She offers oceans of feeling, welling deeps of hurt and betrayal, with insouciant charm and grace. It is a subtle but brilliant performance, and looks as effortless as a gliding swan, all unruffled beauty on the surface and churning like a paddle steamer underneath.

A hugely worthwhile revival, a wonderfully intriguing play, and a production and cast out of the very top-most top drawer.

Runs until 1 July 2023