Theater Review—

Ackbourn’s ‘How The Other Half Loves’ Is Clever And Fun For Summer

By Julie Stern

WESTPORT — In a highly enjoyable way of filling out the summer schedule, Westport Country Playhouse recently continued its tradition of having John Tillinger direct a revival of an early (1970) Alan Ackbourn comedy, featuring Paxton Whitehead, Cecilia Hart, Geneva Carr and Carson Elrod, all of whom have appeared in other Ackbourn plays in the last few years.

Previously the team staged Relatively Speaking and Time of My Life. This year’s entry was How the Other Half Loves, a farce about infidelity in the suburbs, which had a three week run July 28 to August 15.

The plot revolves around an adulterous tangle: Bob Phillips and Fiona Foster are having an affair. When Fiona’s bumbling husband, Frank, and Bob’s deeply suspicious wife, Terry, demand answers for why their mates came home at two in the morning on Wednesday, they independently improvise stories about a third couple, the hapless William and Mary Featherstone. Each one claims to have spent the night consoling a friend whose spouse is apparently “seeing someone.”

Frank and Terry then each decide to “help” by inviting the Featherstones over for an evening of dinner and subtle marriage counseling, creating plenty of dramatic irony, when the particularly clueless William and Mary try to understand what their hosts are hinting at.

The highly prolific Ackbourn — often called the English Neil Simon — is well known for upending theatrical conventions of time and place. For instance, House and Garden consists of two separate plays, performed in adjoining theaters, using a single cast. In House, the action is set in the interior of an English country estate. But each time the actors step through one of the various doors leading to the garden — as behooves characters in a farce — they are suddenly in the middle of the other play: Garden and what they say and do there, becomes part of another audience’s experience.

The complete story is made up of the two halves, but a single ticket only gets you part of the whole.

In How the Other Half Loves, Ackbourn experiments by using one set, to represent two separate households. When Frank and Fiona are on stage, it’s the Foster home. Similarly, when Bob or Terry are in the living room, it’s the Phillips house they are within. At times they may all be in the room together, especially when the phones on the coffee table start ringing, but the audience realizes that the characters are actually oblivious to one another’s presence.

The scene that must have inspired the whole play involves a dinner party. On Thursday evening, the Featherstones are invited to the upscale Foster home. On Friday, it’s the Phillipses’, where a drunk and angry Bob has stalked out to the pub, leaving his indignant wife behind. But since there is only one set, both dinner parties take place simultaneously. The lugubrious William, and his timid wife, must bounce between alternate universes with rapid fire comic timing, varying their expressions and body language between polite responses to the pontifications of the Fosters, and horrified amazement at the escalating fury of the Phillipses.

B.H. Barry, the award winning Fight Director, choreographed some hilarious combat scenes. Paxton Whitehead’s droll portrait of the seemingly totally incompetent Frank, and Carson Elrod’s obsequious toadying as William were delightfully funny. They were well matched by Geneva Carr as Terry, Cecilia Hart as Fiona, and newcomers Darren Pettie as Bob and Karen Walsh as Mary.

Personally I find Ackbourn to be more clever and original than Neil Simon, and as farces generally end well for all involved, this was a light and entertaining way to beat the summer heat, rain, or whatever.