Review: How The Other Half Loves @ The Old Vic

And so it’s goodbye to the Old Vic’s Matthew Warchus. Eleven years after succeeding Kevin Spacey, he is heading for the exit, even if there are two more productions left in his final season as artistic director (he directs Martin Guerre in October before his long-running A Christmas Carol makes its annual appearance). This venerable Alan Ayckbourn comedy closes in September and so officially does Warchus’ reign, having outstayed six prime ministers. Man and farce will vacate the building together, which is more than most administrations manage. So writes Franco Milazzo for the QR.co.uk…

When it made its London debut in 1970 with Robert Morley as the pompous boss, there was drama before the play even opened. Summoned to Morley’s Henley home before the West End run, an unimpressed Ayckbourn listened to the star’s suggestions for improving the play: Frank should have a butler and be a flower-arranger, not a jogger. The meeting ended with Morley threatening to walk, saying, “I think I’m losing patience with this little script. I think I want to do something else,” to which Ayckbourn shot back “Fine, you do that.” Morley stayed and even though Ayckbourn later lamented how the actor had turned his work into a star vehicle, How The Other Half Loves became the playwright’s calling card and the pivotal work of his career.

This suburban sex comedy plays out among three couples. Frustrated housewife Fiona Foster is carrying on with younger man Bob Phillips behind her husband Frank’s back. There are two primary snags with this arrangement. First of all, department head Frank is Bob’s manager. Secondly, even though the oblivious Frank has lost more marbles than the Parthenon, he is beginning to wonder why his wife is getting in at two in the morning and leaving the car parked in the flower bed.

Bob’s other half (frustrated housewife Teresa) also has questions about Bob’s nocturnal activities. He claims to have been out drinking with William Featherstone, an intensely dull man who could talk about indoor plumbing until the cows come home, go out to pasture and then come home again. For her part, Fiona tells Frank she was out with Mary Featherstone, yet another frustrated housewife and a meek, anxious woman who apologetically stammers out what little she says.

“…though Ayckbourn later lamented how the actor had turned his work into a star vehicle, How The Other Half Loves became the playwright’s calling card and the pivotal work of his career.”

Separately, Frank and Teresa decide that the only way to get to the bottom of this is to invite the Featherstones over (Thursday at the Phillips’, Friday at the Fosters’). In the play’s defining scene, Ayckbourn stages the two dinner parties simultaneously, with the action jumping back and forth and, in the round, with the audience banked on all four sides, there’s nowhere for the calamities to hide.

**Laura Elsworthy (Mary Featherstone) and Adam Gillen (William Featherstone) in How the Other Half Loves at The Old Vic 2026. Photo by Manuel Harlan**

Ultimately, this play is about three things: the farce, the class, and the fists. Ayckbourn’s superbly witty text becomes a cavalcade of humour under Phillip Breen. The director keeps the pace rattling along like a souped-up Ford Cortina with a few handbrake stops for dramatic effect. He solidly grounds the action in its mid-twentieth-century berth, using cheeky winks to the modern age to highlight how the play’s themes map onto modern topics.

Class Distinctions and Modern Resonance in How The Other Half Loves

The dinner party catering serves as an emblem of the class distinctions of that period. Cordon bleu is contrasted with cordon bleugh as Fiona produces the expensive pairing of avocado and a quiche while, several rungs below, Teresa offers a chicken noodle soup smelling of antiperspirant accompanied by cheap plonk. The division of labour is settled along similar lines: the husbands earn, the wives remain at home and neither party thinks to question it. The public school-educated Frank — a stumbling, bumbling testament to the Peter Principle — is no better than the billionaires who blithely twitter on about AI, confusing the size of their bank balances with the importance of their opinions. If they were around today, William would be the nerdy Excel whiz rarely seen outside his cubicle, while Bob would be sharing Andrew Tate tweets and nodding along to Jordan Peterson podcasts on his way into work.

The most controversial aspect is retained. At one point, William is asked by Fiona what he would do if he found out Mary was cheating on him. He replies that he would probably hit her. That reaction has already been foreshadowed by the gentle smacking of his wife’s hands every time (in his view) she steps out of line, but there’s still a sharp intake of breath in the pews when he says it. The U-bend guru’s response may shock today’s audiences but, when it first opened, reflected the contemporary attitudes of people like then-man-of-the-moment Sean Connery.

“The director keeps the pace rattling along like a souped-up Ford Cortina with a few handbrake stops for dramatic effect.”

In a 1965 interview with Playboy magazine, the world-famous movie star said that he didn’t think there was anything particularly wrong with hitting a woman, adding that an open-handed slap was justified if all other alternatives had failed, there had been plenty of warning, and the woman was “a bitch, or hysterical, or bloody-minded continually”. He doubled down in a 1987 TV interview with Barbara Walters, telling her he still believed in slapping women, and said that whether it was a good or bad thing to do “depends entirely on the circumstances and if it merits it”. For those watching this in the Seventies, William is not a violent thug but just a Bond-wannabe from the accounts department.

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 frenetic dinner party scene sees Adam Gillen’s William and Laura Elsworthy’s Mary frantically swivel side to side in their seats (a neat touch from set designer Rob Howell) as they try to keep up with battles happening around them.

For fans of farces, this is a no-brainer. Ayckbourn struck gold with this play and its riches shine just as brightly now. There’s solid acting across the cast, with Antoine and Gillen in particular standing out. While Warchus will long be remembered for A Christmas Carol and the record-breaking Groundhog Day, this farcical farewell is not the worst way to wave goodbye.

All Images: Manuel Harlan