The Circle

Incoming Orange Tree artistic director Tom Littler kicks off his tenure with a revival guaranteed to please the substantial trad end of the Richmond theatre’s audience: Somerset Maugham’s 1921 play about a young woman, Elizabeth, who contemplates leaving her MP husband Arnold Champion-Cheney and looks to his mother Lady Cathrine for advice. Littler directs a cast headed up by Jane Asher as Lady C. With no other programming yet announced, it’s not clear if the new Orange Tree regime will mix up older and newer works like his predecessor Paul Miller did, or revert to the strictly old-school programming of the Orange Tree past.