Alan Ayckbourn is Britain’s most prolific living playwright with 92 plays.  Each time I look up the number of his plays, they seem to have gone up by another ten!  I think they are mostly produced first in Scarborough, his home town.  How the Other Half Loves was his ninth play in 1969, only preceded by the more famous Relatively Speaking in 1965.  Apart from tevision showings of his plays around Christmas time, I first came across them at the start of this century with House and Garden at the National Theatre. 

Whereas The Norman Conquests  (1973) (Plays 13th, 14th and 15th) was three plays set in different places within the same time frame, House and Garden had two plays on simultaneously in two different theatres but with the same actors haring between each production.  You can see how inventive Ayckbourn has been in devising new puzzle challenges for himself and the cast and creatives in play construction. 

How the Other Half Loves  (54th and 55th) has six players sometimes on stage together but in two different houses.  It sounds complicated but very soon with great direction from Philip Breen you pick up whi is present and with whom where. Ayckbourn’s sextet is three married couples: Frank and Fiona Foster (Roger Allam and Dorothy Atkinson) quite posh, 50s and Frank is the boss of the company that the other two men work in.  Then there is Bob and Teresa Phillips (Rowam Polonski and Ayesha Antoine) younger than the Fosters and with baby Ben whom we don’t see. Finally drawn into a web of infidelity, deceit and lies are William Featherstone (Adam Gillen) and his wife Mary, often called Mary Mouse (Laura Elsworthy).  William is sexist and controlling and his wife is understandably a nervous wreck.