How The Other Half Loves: Facts
How the Other Half Loves
Play Number: 9World Premiere: 31 July 1969
Venue: Theatre in the Round at the Library Theatre, Scarborough
Premiere Staging: In-the-round
Published: Samuel French
Other Media: No
Cast: 3m / 3f
Run Time: 2hrs
Synopsis: How The Other Half Loves centres on three couples. Fiona Foster and Bob Philips are having an illicit affair unbeknownst to each other's partners and their cover-story involves helping an unaware third couple, the Featherstones, leading to farcical misunderstandings and events.
Note: Notable for its composite set of two over-laid living rooms allowing for simultaneous action in two places and at different times.
- How The Other Half Loves is Alan Ayckbourn's 9th play.
- The world premiere - directed by Alan Ayckbourn - was held at Theatre in the Round at the Library Theatre, Scarborough, on 31 July 1969.
- The London premiere - directed by Robin Midgley - took place at the Lyric Theatre on 5 August 1970.
- The Broadway premiere - directed by Gene Saks - took place at the Royale Theatre on 29 March 1971.
- How The Other Half Loves is the first Ayckbourn play to utilise a composite set (one set representing several locations). Its most famous scene involves two dinner parties in two locations on two nights with one couple present at both parties, taking place simultaneously.
- Although not specifically written for the in-the-round production - as is the case with Taking Steps - Alan Ayckbourn considers it a play that works best in-the-round due to the need to be able to appreciate the two flats being overlaid over each other.
- Although frequently described as a farce, the author believes it is a comedy and that his only true farce is the play Taking Steps.
- During the world premiere run in Scarborough, Alan Ayckbourn was forced to take to the stage for the first time stepping away from professional acting in 1964, after the actor playing Frank Foster was injured. Alan distinguished himself on his first night by improvising the final page after discovering his scrip in-hand was missing the page!
- The extra-ordinarily successful original London run of the play is the second longest contiguous run of an Ayckbourn play after the 1973 production of Absurd Person Singular (contiguous in that the National Theatre's 1977 production of Bedroom Farce ran for longer than both these plays, but as it was in repertory it did not have an unbroken run and consequently did not have as many performances as the other plays).
- How The Other Half Loves was the first Ayckbourn play to be staged on Broadway. The production featured Phil Silvers, of Sergeant Bilko fame, as Frank Foster.
- It was the first Ayckbourn play to have a West End revival. Having originally been performed in London in 1970, Greenwich Theatre's acclaimed 1988 revival transferred to the Duke Of York's Theatre during the same year.
- Its first West End specific revival (i.e. not a transfer) would come in 2016 with Alan Strachan again directing the play at the Royal Theatre Haymarket.
- Alan Ayckbourn marked the play's 40th anniversary with a revival of the play at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, in 2009. Astonishingly, the Press & Marketing Manager managed to produce and approve a programme which failed to credit him as writer on the cover, title page or cast page. Needless to say, the playwright was less than impressed.
- How The Other Half Loves was only the second full-length play by Alan Ayckbourn to have been published; it has never been out of print since 1972. It was initially published by Evans and then by Samuel French.
- Unlike the vast majority of Alan Ayckbourn's plays between the 1965 and 1990, How The Other Half Loves has not been adapted into any other film (i.e. radio/audio, television or film). This is largely due to the requirement of the composite set and the structure of the play.