Following close on the heels of Edward Hall's revival of Somerset Maugham's The Constant Wife (first seen at the Apollo, and now playing at the Lyric), comes a production (also produced by Bill Kenwright) of another Maugham play — Home and Beauty, which goes into the Lyric on Oct. 15.

Directed by Christopher Luscombe, designed by Simon Higglet, the play will star Jamie Theakston (recently seen in the West End in Art) and Victoria Hamilton (A Day in the Death of Joe Egg) and will open on Oct. 29.

Maugham, who ended his life as a famously terrifying, bitter old man in the South of France, was an enormously talented writer (whose nephew, Robin, was also an accomplished author whose novel, "The Servant" forms the basis for Matthew Bourne's Play Without Words currently at the National) who produced a string of plays as well as novels and short stories.

Born in 1874, Maugham, who died in 1965, had his first play, A Man of Honour, performed in 1903, four years before the publication of his first book, "Liza of Lambeth." One of the most successful playwrights of Edwardian England, he had four plays running simultaneously in the West End in 1908.

He bought his villa in the South of France in 1928, and gave up playwriting five years later. He was made a Companion of Honour in 1954.

These days he is very rarely performed, despite having written 27 plays, and even the National Theatre (to whom he left his collection of theatrical paintings — now on loan from the National to the Theatre Museum) have only staged two of his works, Home and Beauty at the Old Vic in 1968, and For Services Rendered at the Lyttelton in 1979.

—By Theatrenow