Another theatre trip this Sunday, and I actually saw this before I saw The Comedy About Spies, but it was an early preview and opening night was only Tuesday this week so I was a good girl and saved it.
How the Other Half Loves is a 1969 sex farce written by Alan Aykbourn, it is his ninth play (his 92nd premieres in Scarborough next month) and in fact was one of his first big successes. It follows three couples across the course of a couple of days, with two different homes existing in one set. When Fiona Foster and Bob Philips’s need to hide their affair from their spouses, they use a third couple – the Featherstones – as an alibi. William and Mary have no idea that this is going on as their lives collide with the Fosters and the Philips and much hilarity ensues.
I have seen a couple of Alan Aykbourn plays, with mixed results, but I do love a farce and this has Roger Allam (on whom more later) and so I trotted down to the Old Vic on a ticket deal. And yes it has its dated moments, but it’s really clever and there are lots of laughs. However, I watched a not insignificant portion of it through my fingers because the cringe got too much for me. As I said to Him Indoors on the way home – I think you’d like it, but I can’t put myself through that again to go with you.
It’s got a cracking cast though – led by Roger Allam, who as you can see from the video above is prepared to look ridiculous. I first saw him on stage nearly two decades ago in another farce – opposite Mark Rylance in Boeing Boeing – and obviously I adore Cabin Pressure of which he is a core component. He can do Serious (I’ve also seen him as Prospero in The Tempest) but comedy is where I have enjoyed him the most. And although every character here has their moment to shine, his Frank Foster is brilliant – he’s the department manager of the other two and has the status and pomposity to go with it but he’s also clueless and bumbling and obssessed with trivialities and under it all he’s actually maybe the kindest character of the lot. As his wife Dorothy Atkinson is channeling Margo from the Good LIfe but with more secrets but Laura Elsworthy as Mary Featherstone is doing something really interesting with the shyest mouse you ever did see who manages to do a roar by the end.
It’s is also really cleverly constructed – the in the round set up and the competing action in the two different houses, which culminates in a simulataneous dinner party as the Featherstones have dinner at the Fosters (on Thursday night) and the Philips’ (on Friday) swiveling in their seats to denote which time line they’re in at any time. And I realise that that may sound mad, but it works and it’s not even the craziest thing that Aykbourn has done in his plays – he can make The Comedy About Spies four bedroom set look simple – whether it’s this, Bedroom Farce (three bedrooms, one night and morning), The Norman Conquests (three plays each set in a different part of a house across one weekend) or House and Garden (two plays, one cast, performed simultaneously in adjoining stages). I’m not sure this is the best place to start with Aykbourn, but if you’re interested in plays with interesting concepts and can cope with Alan Partridge without dying inside then this is worth a look. It’s also the reason why I’ve had Peter Sarstedt’s Where Do You Go To My Lovely stuck in my head on and off for nearly two weeks!
Have a great Sunday
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 
In case, Verity, it needs mentioning, needles to say, Roger Allam is a brilliant straight character in the TV series “Endeavour”, the prequel series to “Morse”.