How the Other Half Loves (tour)
Alan Ayckbourn was just 30 when he created {How the Other Half
Loves::T01257449069}. But, while this was to be only the second of his now extensive canon to reach the West End, he’d already been honing his art for a decade
among friends in his beloved Scarborough.
Ayckbourn confesses to rushing the play’s
writing. He’d promised Scarborough a new comedy and, with only weeks to go,
nothing was written, so it was bashed out within a few marathon sessions.
Of course, you’d never know it: Ayckbourn’s extraordinarily
complex piece of stagecraft went on to become his first smash on Broadway.
Almost 35 years later, Mark Piper‘s new touring production for the Theatre Royal, Windsor
and Churchill Theatre, Bromley, feels every bit as fresh.
Farce is a theatre form that’s become a British institution, but
Ayckbourn effortlessly turns it into an art form. And Piper calls on two Ayckbourn specialists to bring it back to the stage. John Challis and Sue Holderness have been appearing together
for the past two years in two more of the master’s classics – Relatively
Speaking and Time and Time Again – and have the formula absolutely
taped.
Here, Challis is Frank Foster, a gormless company director who relies on his
wife Fiona (Holderness) to get him through the day in one piece. Fiona
needs rather more out of life than playing nursemaid so embarks on an
ill-advised dalliance with one of her husband’s employees, Bob Phillips (Gary
Turner). Bob in turn is married to the similarly socially inept Terri
(Carli Norris) – who’s finding it hard going being a full-time mum to a
hyperactive toddler – and is insensitive enough to just abandon her as he
sees fit.
In order to cover up their indiscretion, the lovers implicate
fellow employee William Featherstone (Richard Kane), as an unlikely Lothario,
not accounting for their spouses desire to see right prevail between William
and his mousy wife Mary (Lavinia Bertram). Cue the obligatory round of mistaken identity, mistaken situation and endless confusion.
What makes this show such a delight is that all the
action is going on simultaneously on a set representing both the Foster and
Phillips households. Julie Godfrey‘s design is just wonderful, with the
two “homes” literally cut into each other. Half a sofa is blue, the other
half biege; toddler’s drawings share the walls with elegant watercolours; and
formica and walnut mingle in the dining rooms. (Watch out for the dinner
parties, in which the Featherstones switch from one to the other simply by
twisting in their seats.)
But the ploy’s success owes to much more than clever design, requiring
huge concentration from the cast. Even the minutiae, like replacing a cup on
the right section of the coffee table, are rigidly observed. While
Challis and Holderness are the undoubted stars, the remaining quartet
provide strong support.
A really enjoyable night out all round.
– John Lawson (reviewed at the Theatre Royal, Norwich)
