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Review: How The Other Half Loves ****
Intriguingly, this play manages to be anachronistic and contemporary at the same time.
Disturbing references to "the little woman" and casual violence against the female characters appear in the production – but so does language and situations that appeal to, and are understood by, a contemporary audience.
The effect I left the theatre with was dizzying. I left as convinced as ever of the sheer genius of Ayckbourn and equally understanding why he is sometimes not as critically appreciated as perhaps he might be.
First staged by Ayckbourn in 1969 (which explains some of the outmoded language and behaviour) the play tells the story of three couples.
Frank and Fiona Foster are well-to-do, middle-aged, long married. Young Bob Phillips works for Frank and has a volatile relationship with his sparky wife, Theresa.
Fiona and Bob have had a liaison one night and their cover story to their respective partners involves William and Mary Featherstone. William also works for Frank Foster and he and his wife each have their own particular eccentricities.
It is possible to pick fault in this play. Firstly the depiction of women makes you, or should, squirm in your seat.
The conventions are a little too conventional. Dinner parties with couples enmeshed in illicit affairs make for easy pickings.
It is this sort of convention that has led to Ayckbourn not being as critically acclaimed in theatrical circles as he should be. It is not gritty, it is not subversive, it is drama set in the cosy world of middle-class middle England.
However, what makes you recognise the genius of Ayckbourn is that he takes this world and explodes the dynamics of theatre. Who thinks of putting two different sitting rooms on one stage and have action take place in each at the same time? In the second act, the playwright gets even more ambitious and has two dinner parties on different nights, taking place on the same stage.
The first time William and Mary swivel their seats from the dinner party of the Fosters' to land in the dinner party at the Phillips' it is an impressive coup de theatre.
The acting was not always up to its usual high standards, but Robert Austin, as Frank Foster, and Ian McLarnon, as William Featherstone, were constantly entertaining.
And when you remember that this play is 40 years old this year, it makes you realise just how far "outside the box" Ayckbourn has always been able to think.
Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, to August 29
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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