How The Other Half Loves

How The Other Half Loves photos

How The Other Half Loves description

Few playwrights have made British audiences laugh — and wince — quite like Alan Ayckbourn, and How The Other Half Loves is the play that sealed his status as a comic genius. Now this beloved classic returns to the very style of staging it was born for — In The Round — in a major new production at the Old Vic, starring Roger Allam and Dorothy Atkinson and directed by Phillip Breen.

Three couples. Two homes. One gloriously tangled web of lies. Fiona Foster and Bob Phillips are having a secret affair — but rather than come clean, they independently use the same hapless third couple, the Featherstones, as their alibi. The Featherstones, blissfully unaware they've been dragged into the chaos, find themselves at the centre of an increasingly farcical spiral of misunderstanding, accusation, and social catastrophe.

First performed in 1969, How The Other Half Loves is a masterclass in comic construction. Ayckbourn's stroke of genius — a composite set of two overlaid living rooms that allows simultaneous domestic action in two separate homes — was revolutionary at the time, and the play's wicked dissection of class, marriage, and self-deception remains as sharp and as funny as ever.

Roger Allam, one of Britain's finest classical actors and beloved for work from The Thick of It to the RSC, and Dorothy Atkinson, acclaimed for her work on stage and screen, lead what promises to be a production full of wit, warmth, and perfectly timed mayhem. Directed by Phillip Breen, this Old Vic production restores the In The Round staging that Ayckbourn wrote the play specifically to exploit.

How The Other Half Loves is the kind of comedy that reminds you why theatre exists — brilliantly observed, unbearably funny, and just a little bit devastating. Don't miss it.

Starring:

Tamzin Outhwaite, Nicholas Le Prevost, Jenny Seagrove

Playing at Old Vic Theatre

103 The Cut, London, SE1 8NB GB (venue info)

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