The Tragedy of Love is Indifference: 2 1/2 Stars

Somerset Maugham, known largely as a novelist ("Of Human Bondage," "The Moon and Sixpence"), was also one of England's most popular playwrights. Audiences loved to see Maugham's irreverent takes on love and marriage, to say nothing of his joy in setting up the upper classes for ridicule. During World War I he was also a member of England's "Literary Ambulance Drivers," that included writers like Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, and E. E. Cummings.

Maugham's theater pieces were the darlings of London's West End. 'The Circle,' first performed in 1921, is a satire about the vagueries of love, as seen through the eyes of the aristocratic Champion-Cheney family. It is basically an English Days of Our Lives: young Elizabeth has eyes for Edward, but is stymied by her marriage to Arnold, whose mother Lady Kitty suddenly appears for the weekend at the same time as Arnold's father Clive, to say nothing of the man Lady Kitty ran away with 30 years earlier: Lord Porteous.

Sadly, Lady Kitty sums it up best: "The tragedy of love is indifference." It's hard to get involved with any of these characters. Lord Porteous has bad teeth. Lady Kitty is a sow. Young Elizabeth is in love with love and young Edward, in that order, but with all the chemistry of the Flu Shot line at the Free Clinic; Arnold is in love with himself (he has two passions: politics and interior decorating). Edward wins Elizabeth, and the audience, after three acts and two long intermissions, says Capital! and Ripping! and Ho Hum.

We know, we know, we know: it's a satire. Like, Dude. You still have to light a fire.

The show is beautifully staged (one of those glorious sets that causes the audience to break into applause as the curtain rises), and you can always count on Somerset Maugham for great one-liners, like Arnold's "After all, a man marries…because he doesn't want to be bothered with sex and all that sort of thing."

Now, if you could bring in the ghost of Ezio Pinza from "South Pacific" to play young Edward the planter, and make us give two figs about the purported illicit romance? Hmmm...maybe set the whole show in a prision camp in Thailand as the Japanese army is closing in? Now we're on to something. "The Circular Bridge Over the River Kwai?"

In the meantime, 'The Circle' is fun, and stunning to look at. The Great Plotnik Theater Awards Division awards 'The Circle' two stars for the set and another half because Ducknik was an English Major (English majors love Maugham). It earns another half because half of it was really funny, but has that half removed for Rampant Foppishness. Two and a Half Stars for 'The Circle' but there is another three quarters waiting if Edward should ever burst into song.