Though The Circle is widely regarded as Somerset Maugham's finest work for the stage - "One of the 100 best plays of the 20th century," according to the posters outside the Royal Theatre, in Northampton - opportunities to see it are few and far between.

Old love: Robert Lang as Lord Porteous and Sheila Reid as Lady Kitty While there have been fitful revivals in the 82 years since it was written, in a remarkable 20-month creative spurt by Maugham that also brought Home and Beauty, Caesar's Wife, The Unknown and the novel The Moon and Sixpence, it has never been granted a firm place in the repertoire.

A powerful case for its inclusion is made in the Oxford Stage Company's gripping revival (director Mark Rosenblatt) which, like so much of this group's recent work, has sadly not been seen on its 'home ground'. But having toured to great critical acclaim last year, the production, now recast, is within easy reach at Northampton until February 24. It should not be missed.

One hardly needs to look far for the reasons for its neglect. In 1919, it was a daring attack on the institution of marriage, with its clear advocacy of love over duty. Soon it came to seem creakily old-fashioned, as the selfish attitudes it advanced became commonplace, and audiences' tastes veered away from plays in which young men with tennis rackets bound into elegant country mansions through French windows - as Nolan Hemmings's Edward Luton does here - and utter lines like "You're such a ripping good sort."

Now we can view it as a delightful period piece, a record of a life of privilege that can never return and - by the by - an insight into Maugham's views about an institution he was about to challenge personally in his decision to leave his wife, Syrie, for a sybaritic life abroad with his American lover Gerald Haxton.

One can see in Luton, a free-wheeling rubber planter, a clear hint of Haxton's dangerous, exotically foreign allure, and it seems more than a coincidence when the prissy politico Arnold Champion-Cheney MP (Christopher Luscombe) - whose wife, Elizabeth, eventually succumbs to the cad's seduction - is told that he really ought to have been (as Syrie was) an interior designer.

But the goings-on among the young people in the play rather take second place to the scene-stealing antics of their elders. For in his cleverest stroke, Maugham provides the equivocating 'bolter' and her lover with an all-too-horrible example of where it all leads, in the disagreeable form of Lady Catherine ('Kitty') Champion-Cheney (Sheila Reid).

Thirty years before, she fled from stately Aston-Adey (fine work from designer Tim Shortall), abandoning her husband Clive (Jonathan Newth) and five-year-old son for a new life with the dashing Lord Porteous. Now she's back for the first time since, a painted, raddled wreck, with the spluttering, drunken Porteous (Robert Lang) in tow, to describe for the benefit of Elizabeth (Rebecca Callard) the shame and suffering - but, one can't help sensing, the fun and freedom too - her conduct brought.

So the message here is that we must fear time, not love. As Robert Herrick advised: "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may."

The Circle

Royal Theatre, Northampton

Until February 24

Check out what else is on at the theatre in Oxfordshire.