Theatre

This novel is less well known. Yet it is a page turner and a real treat. A great actress who is false in everything falls in love with a sexy boy half her age. Maugham’s great talent is to take her as she is and find twists in plot, nail biting suspense, truth in falsehood. Maugham plays with the reader, letting us see In one line thoughts other authors can bore you with for pages. I was up all night with it, unable to put it down.

I finished this simple novel by W. Somerset Maugham on a lazy, rainy summer afternoon. The mood outside matched my own and was somehow reflected in the book I had just completed; because sometimes you just want a story. Not an adventure story full of violence and intrigue and ‘twists’; not a mystery full of death and suspense; not a political thriller where the characters fight each other for temporal power. Just a story; a story about the musings of men as they meander through life – but a good story after all.Theater is just this kind of book. It’s the simple tale of an actress and an affair and what it teachers her about herself and the world she has chosen. There is no great moral of this story. There is no epic struggle for good against wrong. There is no hero, or heroine. There are just people, making decisions as people are wont to do – good decisions and bad decisions alike – as they seek from their lives a greater significance or a lesser tedium.Of course a story like this takes great skill to write – and Maugham does it easily.As I read this story, surrounded as I was by the magnificent Rocky Mountains in a lovely village tucked away from great significance, I wondered if I could write such a novel. I am, perhaps – ok probably – not a great writer like Maugham. Nevertheless, inspired by a simple story and against the backdrop of the fresh clarity all around, I decided I must give it a try. I hope I can find the words that refresh and soothe; as has W. Somerset Maugham in Theater.

While I don't love this novel as much as "The Razor's Edge" and "Cakes and Ale" and "The Moon and Sixpence," it is a fun and lively novel in its own right. Maugham's look at the lives of an actress and her manage-husband is funny and true, but also sympathetic and kind. His strength as an author is that he always introduces his readers to the most unusual people, but he makes them seem so warm, so human despite their faults, that we come to root for them. In this novel, an aging actress, Julia Lambert, embarks on an affair with a younger man. On one hand, this is the most sincere she has been in years: even her son thinks she just acts all the time. On the other hand, she manages her affair as if it were a romantic play. Can she even be herself when she is off the stage? Or is she so involved in creating herself as an actress that she literally has no life without an audience? As Julia faces these questions, Maugham gives us a funny look at what it takes to be famous: wacky treatments to keep her looks youthful, constant dieting and exercise, and perpetual shmoozing with investors and fans (some things never change!). It is Maugham's look at the difference between the private and the public life that makes this novel worth reading, along with the tremendously cruel yet funny climax in which Julia teaches a ruthless sleep-her-way-to-the-top actress the lesson of her life.

It doesn't matter whether Maugham is dealing with London society or life on a small Pacific island, his characters come to life and what matters to them matters to me. That's what I enjoy in his novels and what I would like to learn from him.I believe that clothes do not make a man, nor does a plot make a novel. All depends on the characters, how they see and hear and think and feel, not what they do, but how they do it, who they are.In this novel, he puts the reader inside the mind of an actress, with insights into the art of acting, as well as musings on the relation between make-believe and reality.

This is the best novel ever written about those beguiling creatures called actresses. The central character is Julia Lambert, England's greatest actress, and at times a lying, manipulative bitch. Men who have been made miserable by such women will be disgusted by the novel unless they are able to maintain objective distance and laugh at this woman's scheming as she attempts to carry on a hopeless affair with a boy half her age.Maugham has a remarkable ability to write compelling scenes that avoid melodrama and predictability. His years as a comic playwright served him well as a story teller. I find him one of the easiest to read of great (or near great) fiction writers. He keeps you turning the pages and avoids longeurs.Maugham's view of human nature is tawdry -- some might say filthy. He believed a a perfectly respectable woman was capable of an episode of cheap sex in a sleeping car on a train. He certainly shows no Victorian sentimentality about the fairer sex.I won't give away the ending, but it is the oddest scene in the novel. The ending is original to the point of peculiarity. Maugham believes the artist is the only truly free person because he can use his pain to create art. I don't think being an artist helped Maugham find happiness at the end of his own long life.

Julia Lambert is a gifted stage actress, the most renowned in London. Her immense talent has made her the toast of the theater world and a major celebrity. Her personal relations are another thing altogether. In Julia ,Maugham has created the ultimate narcissistic personality. She is so taken with own effect on people via her acting abilities that she cannot help but to use those skills off the stage as well to manipulate just about everyone she comes into contact with. The writing is pure Maugham and for fans of his work, this lesser known novel delivers. Julia and her theater manager husband are realistically portrayed as they progress in their careers and age together. Maugham was intimately involved in the London theater world and he is on obviously familiar territory so the writing and characterizations ring true throughout.A very fine novel by one of my favorite writers and highly recommended.

I loved it ! I bought it to improve my English, it was easy to read and it is really a good story!

W. Somerset Maugham was a highly skilled literary craftsman and by the time he wrote this short novel, he had three decades of experience behind him. Not surprisingly, then, this is a highly accomplished piece of fiction : a good story, well drawn characters, wit, and the usual Maugham cynicism about love and sexual desire. If you like Maugham, this won't disappoint, and if you are new to Maugham, you are in for a treat.

ロンドンで著名な一流舞台女優となったJulia Lambertの心のひだをモームが描いている。なぜ20歳以上も年下のTomに心が奪われたのか、理解に窮する女心だが時に彼女の自白も含め、心理が読者にわかるように書かれていると思う。舞台女優の楽屋裏を覗いたような気分になります。

英語のレッスンで使っています。なかなか難しいです。テキストとして指定されているので使っています。

It's a marvelous story of an actress whose life was the theater and she couldn't help herself from acting in her private life: even in her most intimate relations and as a mother and wife.