How the Other Half Loves at a glance

Show
How the Other Half Loves
Status
Old Vic run closed 19 September 2026
Theatre
The Old Vic, 103 The Cut, London SE1 8NB
Run
29 July – 19 September 2026; previews to 10 August
Staging
In the round — the configuration Ayckbourn wrote the play for at Scarborough
Genre
Play (comedy)
Running time
Approximately 2 hours 45 minutes, including a 20-minute interval
Age guidance
12+
Writer
Alan Ayckbourn (1969)
Director
Phillip Breen
Cast
Roger Allam (Frank Foster), Dorothy Atkinson (Fiona Foster), Rowan Polonski (Bob Phillips), Ayesha Antoine (Teresa Phillips), Adam Gillen (William Featherstone), Laura Elsworthy (Mary Featherstone)
Set and costume
Rob Howell
Lighting
Azusa Ono
Sound
Dyfan Jones
Season
Part of Matthew Warchus's final season as Old Vic artistic director
Next at this venue
Martin Guerre, to 31 October 2026

Looking back: How the Other Half Loves at The Old Vic

4.4
★★★★★

LTH Retrospective Rating

Retrospective by the London Theatre Hub editorial team. Last updated: 22 September 2026.

The Verdict

Phillip Breen's How the Other Half Loves closed at The Old Vic on 19 September 2026 after seven weeks in the round. Ayckbourn wrote the play for Scarborough's theatre-in-the-round in 1969 and its central device — the Fosters' and the Phillipses' living rooms occupying the same stage, and two dinner parties on consecutive nights played simultaneously with the same guests at both — was built for an audience on all sides. Breen's production, on Rob Howell's set of swivel chairs, restored that: WhatsOnStage found the choreography of the intersecting scenes "done with huge fluidity and dexterity."

The notices were among the most consistent of the year. The Telegraph, Financial Times, The Independent, The Times, The Guardian, WhatsOnStage and BroadwayWorld all gave four stars; LondonTheatre, The Stage and the Evening Standard gave three. The Times said "you can't take your eyes off Roger Allam" and called his Frank Foster "a masterclass in comic timing." The Financial Times found him "a joy, a man lost in the mists of his own self-esteem." The Guardian gave him "a magnificent scene as a hapless marital Poirot" and said the cast of six was "more than half the joy." Dorothy Atkinson, per WhatsOnStage, "excels at drawing out a world of emotion in a single raised eyebrow." The three-star notices were not unhappy: The Stage said Breen "serves up the chuckles and the winces with aplomb."

What Made It Special

  • Roger Allam's Frank. The performance every review led with — pompous, baffled, forensic about the wrong details, and very funny.
  • The double dinner party. Ayckbourn's most famous structural trick, two evenings at once, given the in-the-round staging it was designed for.
  • Dorothy Atkinson. A Fiona whose stillness did as much work as Allam's bluster.
  • The Featherstones. Adam Gillen and Laura Elsworthy as the couple used as an alibi by both affairs — the roles the play's cruelty and sadness run through.
  • A final-season Ayckbourn. One of the last productions of Matthew Warchus's tenure, alongside Glengarry Glen Ross and Martin Guerre, and the crowd-pleaser of the three.

Everything You Need to Know

What happens in How the Other Half Loves?

Frank Foster is Bob Phillips's boss. Fiona Foster is sleeping with Bob. When both come home late on the same night, each tells their spouse they were consoling a colleague, William Featherstone, whose marriage is in trouble — and each names a different Featherstone as the one in distress. The Featherstones, meanwhile, are a shy, newly arrived couple who have never met any of them.

Two living rooms, one stage

Ayckbourn puts the Fosters' expensive, tidy home and the Phillipses' chaotic one on stage at the same time, overlapping, so that a phone call between them crosses the room and both marriages are visible at once. The audience watches Frank and Teresa each piece together the wrong story from the same set of lies.

The dinner parties

The Fosters invite the Featherstones to dinner on Thursday. The Phillipses invite them on Friday. Both dinners are played simultaneously, the Featherstones swivelling between hosts, the food, the drink and the arguments of two different evenings colliding in real time. It ends, in both houses, in disaster.

The morning after

Frank, now convinced he has uncovered the affair, sets out to fix everything and fixes nothing. Ayckbourn resolves the plot the way he usually does — with everyone slightly worse off, nobody honest, and the audience unsure whether to laugh. Approximately 2 hours 45 minutes including a 20-minute interval; age guidance 12+.