ONE secret love affair, two disaster-bound dinner parties and three couples headed for trouble add up to Alan Ayckbourn’s farcical tale of matrimonial mishaps How The Other Half Loves, newly confirmed for an autumn run in York.
Direct from an extended season in London’s West End, impresario Bill Kenwright’s revival of Ayckbourn’s 1969 comedy will be on tour from August 30, visiting Salford, Glasgow, Malvern, Bath, Richmond, Guildford, Cheltenham, Brighton and Norwich, as well as the Grand Opera House from October 9 to 14.
Robert Daws
In a play that brought the Scarborough playwright his first Broadway show, Bob Philips and Fiona Foster clumsily try to cover up their affair, whereupon the intervention of their spouses, Teresa and Frank, only adds to the confusion. William and Mary Featherstone find themselves stuck in the middle, falsely accused of adultery and with no idea as to how they have become involved.
The plot culminates in two catastrophic dinner parties on successive nights, shown on stage at the same time, after which the futures of all three couples look in jeopardy in Ayckbourn’s comedy of social graces and misunderstandings.
Leon Ockenden
The cast comprises Robert Daws and Caroline Langrishe as Frank and Fiona Foster; Leon Ockenden and Charlie Brooks as Bob and Teresa Philips; and Matthew Cottle and Sara Crowe as William and Mary Featherstone.
Daws appeared in the television series The Royal, Outside Edge and Roger Roger; Langrishe has starred in Lovejoy, Holby City and Judge John Deed; Ockenden played Will Chatterton in ITV’s Coronation Street and Brooks is best known for her soap-opera villain, Janine Butcher, in BBC1’s EastEnders.
Sara Crowe
Cottle will be reprising his West End performance as William Featherstone; Crowe has West End credits in Ayckbourn’s Absurd Person Singular and W Somerset Maugham’s The Constant Wife.
Premiered at Scarborough’s Stephen Joseph Theatre in 1969, How The Other Half Loves opened in the West End in 1970 at the Lyric Theatre, where it ran for 869 performances. Bill Kenwright produced the first major London revival in 2016, first at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, followed by an extended run at the Duke of York’s. Now comes the tour, directed by Alan Strachan, who rose to early prominence as Ayckbourn’s chosen director and has since directed plays in New York, Copenhagen and Amsterdam, as well as in London and at the SJT.
Matthew Cottle
This year is Sir Alan Ayckbourn’s 58th year as a playwright. The world premiere of his latest work, A Brief History Of Women, will be staged in The Round at the SJT from September 1 to October 7, billed as “a comedy in four parts about an unremarkable man and the remarkable women who loved him, left him, or lost him over 60 years, and of the equally remarkable old manor house that saw and heard it all happen”.
Tickets for the York run of How The Other Half Loves – the tour’s only Yorkshire dates – are on sale on 0844 871 3024 or at atgtickets.com/york
Caroline Langrishe
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