Review Roundup: HOW THE OTHER HALF LOVES at the Old Vic Theatre
The reviews are in for How the Other Half Loves, Alan Ayckbourn’s 1969 comedy of suburban infidelity, revived in the round at the Old Vic by Phillip Breen as part of Matthew Warchus’s farewell season. The critics arrived at a striking measure of agreement about the company: Roger Allam’s gloriously vague Frank and Dorothy Atkinson’s witheringly patient Fiona are named in every notice, with Laura Elsworthy, Adam Gillen and Ayesha Antoine singled out almost as often, and the play’s celebrated double-dinner-party scene drew admiration across the board. What divided them was the writing underneath it: several found the period trappings part of the charm, while others thought the plot creaked.
The verdict: ten reviews in so far — five four-star notices, one three-star, and four outlets that publish no rating. Among those that do score, the average is 3.8 out of 5, and every one of them singles out Roger Allam.
What are critics saying about HOW THE OTHER HALF LOVES?
Time Out
“Hilarious performances power an excellent revival of Alan Ayckbourn’s surprisingly wholesome infidelity comedy”
Reviewer: Andrzej Lukowski
“But it’s the brilliant comic performances that make this thing tick. Allam is superb as Frank, who potters around guilelessly in a pair of alarming short shorts, and whose seeming genuine innocence about what is going on is tempered by a ponderous but unstoppable train of thought that an increasingly panicked Fiona can see trundling alarmingly towards her.”
WhatsOnStage
“Phillip Breen’s revival of the Alan Ayckbourn classic, starring Roger Allam and Dorothy Atkinson, runs until 19 September”
Reviewer: Aliya Al-Hassan
“Ayckbourn’s structural skill is to overlap the two homes and two dinner parties, using tables crossed over each other so William and Mary engage with both dinners simultaneously. Breen’s choreography of the constantly intersecting scenes and use of swivel chairs is done with huge fluidity and dexterity, leading to some incredibly funny moments.”
London Box Office
Reviewer: Stuart King
“Heading the cast as Frank Foster the Company Manager who misinterprets and misconstrues the tidbits thrown his way, Roger Allam delivers a masterclass in comedy timing (albeit there were a few dangerously ponderous moments on press night during the delivery of this notoriously conversational word salad of trivialities and trip hazards). As Fiona, his long-suffering wife who may have sought extra curricular distractions elsewhere, Dorothy Atkinson epitomises the frustrated woman caught in a trap of her own making.”
The Reviews Hub
Reviewer: Phoebe Taplin
“With choreographic precision, Phillip Breen’s ingenious direction makes the most of Ayckbourn’s witty, inventive script. The lives of two households play out simultaneously in the same space. Bob Phillips complains about the lack of tea and breakfast at the same moments that Fiona carries trays of porcelain cups and boiled eggs across the stage. Two characters open different newspapers in sync with a parallel movement. Paths cross, and characters stand obliviously next to each other in Ayckbourn’s crowded dance of modern life.”
theQR
Reviewer: Franco Milazzo
“If Roger Allam considers this a “little script”, there’s no sign of it in his Frank. He commits his heart and soul, stumbling around like a clueless Columbo with always one more question on his lips for his wife. Opposite him, Dorothy Atkinson’s Fiona ducks and dodges his posers like Ali in his prime, some fabulous fabulation always at the ready. As the philanderer Bob and his Guardian-loving wife Teresa, Rowan Polonski and Ayesha Antoine’s head-to-heads are brutal to the point of being gladiatorial; instead of blades or tridents, there are barbs, sarcasm and insults in an arena filled with passive (and sometimes not so passive) aggression.”
The Standard
“Implausible and dated farce”
Reviewer: Nick Curtis
“It’s meticulously plotted and executed, elegantly staged in the round as originally conceived, and coasts successfully on the comic timing of Dorothy Atkinson and Roger Allam (still silkily hilarious despite fluffing his lines several times on opening night). It’s also wildly implausible and dated. I found myself smiling thinly amid belly-laughers.”
The Guardian
“Alan Ayckbourn’s ingenious farce brings the houses down”
Reviewer: Mark Lawson
“The cast of six, though, is more than half the joy, their verbal and physical humour stopping the show as surely as big numbers in musicals. Roger Allam’s Frank, managerial pomposity concealing kindness, has a magnificent scene as a hapless marital Poirot, wildly mis-summarising who was in which room with whom when. Laura Elsworthy’s Mary wins a big laugh via a feat of backstage athleticism. Ayesha Antoine’s Teresa shows how spirited acting can update an older play’s social attitudes.”
London Theatre
“Alan Ayckbourn’s hilarious farce is a bravura technical feat”
Reviewer: Cheryl Markosky
“Dorothy Atkinson is terrific as Fiona with her withering, sidelong glances and ironic overuse of the word “Darling”. Frank can’t remember, find or fix anything, which drives Fiona mad. However, it’s touching how Frank carefully covers up his disappointment with their relationship while, rather heartbreakingly, Fiona just wants Frank to notice her.”
British Theatre Guide
Reviewer: Vera Liber
“In AD Matthew Warchus’s final season, as he says, all productions will take place in the round, and director Phillip Breen resurrects Ayckbourn’s play to the staging it was written for at the Stephen Joseph theatre in Scarborough. But the stage does not rotate as in their recent Arcadia, so where you sit determines what you will see. I mostly see the back of Roger Allam’s head, but what a gorgeous, lugubrious voice, in character as Frank Foster, with his pauses and um-ings and ah-ings.”
Also reviewed by: The Stage (Sam Marlowe, “Serves up chuckles and winces with aplomb”), whose review sits behind a paywall.
If you are catching up on the summer’s openings, our Review Roundup for Abigail’s Party at the Harold Pinter Theatre gathers the verdicts on another revival of a period comedy of manners, and there is full casting news for Hay Fever at Wyndham’s Theatre for anyone whose taste runs to well-bred people behaving badly.
How the Other Half Loves is booking at the Old Vic Theatre until 19 September 2026.