How does the other half love?

A top-quality production christens the Gladstone

How the Other Half Loves

The first play of any theatre’s season has to come right out of the blocks with strength, but still be committed to building an audience, and this production of Alan Ayckbourn’s How the Other Half Loves is perfect in that role. A twisting modern British comedy of manners, the play manages to captivate while retaining a certain lightness.

The linchpin of this show is unquestionably Andy Massingham’s hysterical Frank Foster. He is pitch- and picture-perfect as an upper-class English buffoon so winningly well meaning that he seems a force of nature. Alix Sideris plays the charming but mercenary Fiona Foster. Her vanity juxtaposes with her affection for Frank, and though you don’t forgive her indiscretions, her brittleness is sympathetic. Kris Joseph obviously revels in his role as middle-class cad Bob Phillips. He positively swims in grease while his long-suffering wife Terry Phillips (Michelle LeBlanc) brings her neglected intellect to bear on clipping articles from the newspaper. Pierre Brault and Teri Loretto match perfectly as the mousy go-betweens dragged into a web of infidelities.

At times the play veered close to cartoonish farce – I admit I preferred the subtler, more tense bite of the first act to the obvious unfolding in the second. But this is a very good play, as proved by the snorting, laughing crowd surrounding me.

As appeared in the Ottawa XPress – Sept 25, 2008
http://www.ottawaxpress.ca/stage/stage.aspx?iIDArticle=15609