Matthew Warchus's decision to reconfigure the Old Vic into an in-the-round setup for his final year as artistic director pays off with a fine revival of Alan Ayckbourn's 1969 classic 'How the Other Half Loves.' The production, running from 19 August to 19 September 2026, has earned 4 out of 5 stars.
A Cleverly Staged Infidelity Farce
Unlike many of Ayckbourn's later plays, this one is not about robots. It is explicitly written for in-the-round performance, with a single central set representing the homes of two couples: Frank and Fiona Foster, and Teresa and Bob Phillips. Time is telescoped and chopped up, so that two different dinner parties on consecutive nights are spliced together into one unpredictable whole.
Roger Allam plays Frank, a classic naive Ayckbourn protagonist—a well-meaning, breathtakingly unperceptive director at a local firm who is absentminded to the point that, according to the review, such a character might not be written today without audiences assuming he has dementia. One thing he is not absentminded about is his wedding anniversary, which he remembered, unlike his wife Fiona (Dorothy Atkinson). Sick of Frank's lack of attentiveness, Fiona has been having an affair with neighbour Bob (Rowan Polonski).
Brilliant Comic Performances
As the cogs slowly turn in Frank's brain regarding why Fiona missed their anniversary, she needs an excuse. Across the way, harried young mother Teresa (Ayesha Antoine) is considerably more suspicious of the boorish Bob. The two guilty parties hit upon a plan: they tell their partners that problems in Mary and William Featherstone's marriage necessitated a night out to discuss it. The innocent parties suggest having the Featherstones round for dinner, leading to the centrepiece of the play—two different dinner parties staged simultaneously.
According to the review, Ayckbourn's characters are tropey: bumbling nice guy Roger, wilting posh lady Fiona, crotchety exhausted mum Teresa, and unspeakable douchebag Bob. Yet the play is described as funny, zingy, intricately wrought, and strangely wholesome, feeling like a breath of fresh air compared to the trouser-dropping sex farces of the time. Warchus's period-accurate production adds a sweet layer of provincial innocence, evoking a time when lives were more community-based and structured around unglamorous 9-to-5 jobs.
Standout Performances
Allam is superb as Frank, who potters around guilelessly in alarming short shorts, with his genuine innocence tempered by a ponderous but unstoppable train of thought that an increasingly panicked Fiona can see trundling towards her. However, the real stars are Laura Elsworthy and Adam Gillen as Mary and William Featherstone. Their outlandish, profoundly unnaturalistic performances give the production a real shot in the arm: Elsworthy's Mary is absurdly shy and highly strung, while Gillen's William is just really weird, like he is constantly having an angry Northern seizure.
The review notes that while many of Ayckbourn's projects have a more fun concept than execution, in Warchus's production, 'How the Other Loves' still sings—a clever, strangely sweet infidelity farce that is of the 1960s but remains timelessly funny. The play runs 2 hours 45 minutes, with tickets priced between £14.50 and £76.50 at the Old Vic, located at 103 The Cut, Waterloo Road, London SE1 8NB.
