The Circle is certainly a reliable old chestnut. The play is set in a very proper London drawing room, in which all the period furniture is arranged just so, and it seems to belong to the Victorian age, though actually the play came out in the 1920s. At first you recoil in some embarrassment from a snobbish mentality which seems more quaint than offensive by now, but in spite of that,… the thing really does play.

The Circle is part social comedy, part problem play. The question it poses is this: Should a well-bred English wife, who seems to be set up with every social advantage, throw it all over and run away with another man just because her husband is an insufferable prig and life has become so boring that one could scream? Well, The Circle chews on this question as long as it seems dramatically interesting...