A warm welcome to you, our audience, for the Stage Club's production of Alan Ayckbourn's How the Other Half Loves.
One of his earliest plays, How the Other Half Loves shows clearly why Alan Ayckbourn is said to possess probably the most agile and inventive brain ever applied to the creation of comedy in England.
The extraordinary physical, emotional and verbal geometry of the play is signalled immediately by the set, a composite of two living-rooms, the Fosters’ and the Phillips’, contained and overlapping in the same area.
The action deals, on the surface, with the results of a casual affair between the upper-middle-class Fiona Foster and Bob Phillips, who works for Fiona’s husband Frank.
Frank wants to know where his wife was the night before. Just os suspicious is Bob's wife Teresa, whose liberal views are complicated by post-natal depression.
As their excuse, Bob and Fiona hit on William Featherstone, who works at the same firm, and his wife Mary. They each claim that they were helping the Featherstones with their (non-existent) marriage problems.
To the consternation of Fiona and Bob, their respective spouse, both invite the Featherstones to dinner — and here Ayckbourn summarily dismisses the constraints of time and space. William and Mary are seen at dinner simultaneously with the Fosters and the Phillips’, on separate nights, in different houses.
This complex construction is startling enough, but beneath the skilful comic writing and the ingenious staging Ayckbourn delivers some acerbic comments on English class values and sexual politics. All the characters are trapped to a degree by their upbringing, class, income, education and emotional training.
It has indeed been said that the more farcical his work is, the more clearly one hears the authentic sound of human desperation.
I have immensely enjoyed directing this play. My talented cast could not have been more hard-working and dedicated, and our back-stage crew deserve every plaudit for their selfless efforts.
I thank you, too, for without an audience there is no show. I hope you will enjoy How the Other Half Loves, and I hope those of you who are not already members of the Stage Club will be inspired to join us.
– William Laws (Director)
