By Neil Durham

WORTH A LOOK?: ****

WHEN?: Wednesday 29 July, opens 11 August and runs through 19 September 2026 RUNTIME: 180 minutes (with a 20-minute interval but aiming for 150 minutes)

Olivier Award-winner Roger Allam (A Number, Bridge Theatre) is the hilarious best reason to see this farce as bumbling businessman Frank Foster who fails to realise his wife is cheating on him.

• Read on for reasons including how this timely production could ride the crest of the wave as a whole new audience discovers its writer’s genius

This 1969 play was Alan Ayckbourn’s 1st big hit and now it’s easy to see why because this tale of 3 couples often set simultaneously in 2 homes influenced much that came after it including TV comedy The Good Life and the revered Abigail’s Party which returns to the West End next month.

The funniest set piece is when we see couple William and Mary Featherstone sitting at a dinner table on chairs which move depending on which of 2 hosting couples they’re at dinner with.

Comic timing like this requires great skill to look this effortless and despite this being the 1st preview this cast is already extremely well versed and can only get funnier.

Foster’s wife Fiona played by an unflappable Dorothy Atkinson is cheating on her husband with his employee Bob Phillips, a rogueish Rowan Polonski, and their affair is endangered when the Featherstones, a cowardly Adam Gillen and naive Laura Elsworthy, are invited for dinner with both married couples on separate nights we see simultaneously.

Outgoing Old Vic artistic director Matthew Warchus writes in the programme: ‘I grew up in North Yorkshire with Alan Ayckbourn’s theatre on my doorstep and so throughout the 80s I probably saw every new Ayckbourn play in its original production. It’s what developed my love of In The Round theatre and my huge admiration for Ayckbourn as an unflinching tragi-comic writer.’

We saw a fairly flat version of this play at Theatre Royal Haymarket a decade ago and this production benefits hugely from reverting to the original in-the-round staging meaning the audience feels even more involved in the ensuing chaos.

This year’s Woman In Mind starring Sheridan Smith was the 1st Ayckbourn in the West End for a decade and perhaps now the time is right for a re-appraisal of his work which seems to have slipped out of fashion.

If you loved Roger Allam as a hopeless politician in TV’s The Thick Of It you’ll doubtless react as this audience did this night with uproarious belly laughs at quite how out of touch his infantile businessman is.

The kick of Ayckbourn however is always that however middle class and polite things seem there’s often an uncomfortable undercurrent and here it is quite how controlling Gillen’s Featherstone is but the writer’s women have often had the last laugh and that is very much the case here.

How The Other Half Loves was very much the extremely clever comedy that broke the genius that is Ayckbourn and this timely and hilarious new production could ride the crest of the wave as a whole new audience discovers his genius.

• Main pictures via Facebook courtesy Old Vic Theatre Tickets
• Have you seen an Alan Ayckbourn show before and what did you think of this 1? Let us know what you thought in the comments below
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