Alan Ayckbourn’s How The Other Half Loves - Theatre Royal Haymarket
Preview by Lizzie Guilfoyle
ALAN Ayckbourn’s farcical tale of matrimonial mishaps, How The Other Half Loves, will receive its first major West End revival this spring. The first of his plays to be staged on Broadway, it will run for a limited season at the Theatre Royal Haymarket – from Wednesday, March 23 to Saturday, June 25, 2016.
At turns heart-wrenching and hilarious, Ayckbourn’s tale of social graces and personal misunderstanding remains one of the celebrated writer’s most famous and much loved comedies.
How The Other Half Loves opened in the West End – at the Lyric Theatre – in 1970 and ran for a staggering 869 performances, delighting critics and audiences alike.
As Bob and Fiona clumsily try to cover up their affair, their spouses’ intervention only adds to the confusion. William and Mary Featherstone become stuck in the middle, falsely accused of adultery and with no idea as to how they’ve become involved. The plot culminates in two disastrous dinner parties on successive nights, shown at the same time, after which the future of all three couples seems in jeopardy…
2016 marks Alan Ayckbourn’s 55th year as a theatre director and his 57th as a playwright. To date he has written 80 plays – the latest of which will open at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough in 2016 – and his work has been translated into over 35 languages, is performed on stage and television throughout the world and has won countless awards.
Major successes include: Relatively Speaking, Absurd Person Singular, Bedroom Farce, A Chorus of Disapproval and The Norman Conquests. In the past four years, there have been revivals of Season’s Greetings and A Small Family Business at the National Theatre and productions of Absent Friends, A Chorus of Disapproval and Relatively Speaking in the West End.
In 2009, Ayckbourn retired as artistic director of the Stephen Joseph, where almost all his plays have been and continue to be first staged. In recent years, he has been inducted into American Theatre’s Hall of Fame, received the 2010 Critics’ Circle Award for Services to the Arts and became the first British playwright to receive both Olivier and Tony Special Lifetime Achievement Awards. He was knighted in 1997 for services to theatre.
How The Other Half Loves is directed by theatre director and biographer Alan Strachan, who has directed plays in New York, Copenhagen and Amsterdam. However, the majority of his work has been in London. He was Artistic Director of the Greenwich Theatre in London for over a decade, and has worked with, amongst others, Sir Michael Redgrave, Dame Penelope Keith, Maureen Lipman CBE, Sir Michael Gambon and Sir Alec Guinness. He came to early prominence as the director of Alan Ayckbourn, and has been involved with Ayckbourn’s theatre at Scarborough for many years.
Produced by Bill Kenwright, How The Other Half Loves has set and costume design by Julie Godfrey. Casting will be announced in due course.
To book, call the box office on +44 (0) 207 930 8800 or visit www.trh.co.uk/.
Joshua Harmon’s comedy Bad Jews continues at the Theatre Royal Haymarket until Saturday, March 19, 2016.