“The play’s a game,” says playwright Sir Alan Ayckbourn, “which I hope an audience enjoys playing as much as the actors enjoy playing it.” Quite. It’s an entertaining bauble, chock full of colliding assumptions, misinterpretations, well-intentioned but misguided interventions, and all the usual trimmings of a farcical comedy of errors. But, as written by the U.K.’s prominent and prolific Sir Alan Ayckbourn, “How the Other Half Loves” is elevated by generous quantities of the dry wit that constitutes one of Britain’s most treasured exports.
[img]848|exact|||no_popup[/img]Adam J. Smith, Erin Anne Williams, Jodi Fleisher and James May
Starting with the Fosters, a wealthy couple whose male half brings in the income as upper-echelon management of a large firm and whose female half spends it as a socialite, the play establishes a thrilling rhythmic banter carried over to the middle-class Phillips. Where the Fosters have a cozy sort of marriage on the verge of an arguably pleasant ossification, the Phillips are burdened by the chaos of youth where Bob binge-drinks to escape from a baby and an apathetic wife who finds her relief in assaulting Bob with well-deserved badgering. Thus the stage is set for the revelation of an affair whose concealment leads to comic mayhem, particularly for a third couple, the Detweilers, who are unwittingly brought into the whole affair by a lie.
Had Sir Ayckbourn followed conventions, How the Other Half Loves would be an entirely respectable and funny outing, if not a strictly substantial one, into the untamed jungle of human relationships. By collapsing space and time onto Stephen Gifford’s homely and detailed set design, however, the play becomes a droll and brain-tickling piece of stagecraft. Events that happen simultaneously in two different spaces but at the same are staged together at the same time. One scene cleverly sets up two events that occur in the same space but at different times. Erin Ann Williams and James May, as the hapless Detweilers, get the best of it as they switch their characters’ conversation from one timeframe to another in a scene that encompasses dinner with the Fosters on one evening and dinner with the Philips on the following night.
The good news is that Todd Nielsen’s direction – and a cast plainly enjoying itself – makes the warping much clearer than it might seem like when read in the abstract. Despite the high spirits and mostly brisk pace, Sir Ayckbourn’s experiments in gaming space and time don’t result in dizziness, but in a kind of giddiness.
‘How the Other Half Loves.’ Written by Sir Alan Ayckbourn. Directed by Todd Nielsen. Starring Gregory North, DeeDee Rescher, Adam J. Smith, Erin Anne Williams, James May and Jodi Fleisher. On stage at the International City Theatre, Long Beach. Performances Thursday through Sunda. Closes Sunday, May 23. Visit www.internationalcitytheatre.org or call 562.436.4610 for information and tickets.