How The Other Half Loves

Written by Alan Ayckbourn
Directed by Karen Carleton
Performed in Mill Theatre 24 to 28 March 2009

Springtime Comedy at the Mill Theatre
An open and shut case of laughter unlimited

On Saturday 28 March 2009, the echoes of laughter generated by the well known and well loved comedy 'How the Other Half Loves' by Alan Ayckbourn finally faded from the main stage in the Mill Theatre.

Poster

Directed by Karen Carleton, the play is a direct descendant of the drawing room comedy of Oscar Wilde and Noël Coward.

It adds a more contemporary outlook, including references to and a certain dependence upon the precepts of the ‘permissive society’, but it is essentially a tale of well-to-do people getting lost in the mix between social graces and personal misunderstandings.

'How the Other Half Loves' is a clever, witty and well crafted play that plays with time and space to present the lives and loves, passion and panic of three married couples in a play of love and laughter, meals and mayhem. Like all of Ayckbourn's comedies it is about the precise interaction of sex and class in modern English society. Bob Phillip's liaison with his boss's wife is in danger of being discovered by their respective partners. Each attempt to wriggle out of suspicion by projecting their own infidelity on to a third, totally innocent, uninteresting and unsuspecting couple in the Featherstones.

The action takes place at two dinner parties given on different nights. The single set is almost a character in itself, so important is it to the action. It represents two living-dining rooms at once. The furniture and often the people of the two places are intermingled, most notably in the scene that closes the first act, when one hapless couple is having Thursday night dinner with another pair and Friday night dinner with the third. The ensuing action leads to a string of misunderstandings and events with hilarious consequences in one of Alan Ayckbourn's best loved comedies.

In common with Wilde and Coward, it also trades on the quintessentially English sense of faint superiority and the proprietary repression of natural emotional reactions to extreme situations. It is also very funny; but like all first-rate comedies, the play is only funny because it tackles serious issues.

Cast
The cast of 'How The Other Half Loves' (l to r) Claire Reilly, Sean Murphy, Claire O'Donovan, Kevin Fahey, Orla Hegan and Brian Molloy (seated).

 

Scene from the play

'How the Other Half Loves' is a clever, witty and well crafted play that plays with time and space to present the lives and loves, passion and panic of three married couples in a play of love and laughter, meals and mayhem.

Scene from the play

The furniture and often the people of the two places are intermingled, most notably in the scene that closes the first act, when one hapless couple is having Thursday night dinner with another pair and Friday night dinner with the third. The ensuing action leads to a string of misunderstandings and events with hilarious consequences in one of Alan Ayckbourn's best loved comedies.

Scene from the play
Scene from the play

 

Like all of Ayckbourn's comedies it is about the precise interaction of sex and class in modern English society.

Bob Phillip's liaison with his boss's wife is in danger of being discovered by their respective partners.

 

Each attempt to wriggle out of suspicion by projecting their own infidelity on to a third, totally innocent, uninteresting and unsuspecting couple in the Featherstones. The action revolves around two dinner parties given on different nights.

The set

The single set is almost a character in itself, so important is it to the action. It represents two living-dining rooms at once.

Cast
Frank Foster
Fiona Foster
Bob Philips
Teresa Philips
William Featherstone
Mary Featherstone
Brian Molloy
Claire O'Donovan
Kevin Fahey
Orla Hegan
Sean Murphy
Claire Reilly
Backstage Team
Director
Set Design
Costume Design
Sound Design
Lighting Design
Production Manager
Stage Manager
Assistant Stage Managers
Stage Management Team



Set Construction


Publicity

Make-Up
Continuity
Karen Carleton
Louis O'Byrne
Dympna Murray
Declan Brennan
Paul Macken
Niamh Daly
Bernard Doyle
Joanne Keane, Jean Monahan
Helen Martin, Lorraine Hedderman,
Aisling McArdle, Sarah Cunningham,
Stacy Hamilton, Teresa Murphy
Brendan Dunne, Brian Dempsey,
John Carleton, Louis O'Byrne,
Bernard Doyle, Fergal Cleary,
Tony McGettigan
Joanne Keane, Deirdre Davenport,
Muriel Caslin-O'Hagan
Teresa Dempsey, Doris Cullen
Ciaran Dwyer, Richard Kirby
Stage Manager

A show like 'How The Other Half Loves' would never get off the ground, let alone fly successfully before an audience, without the skill and dedication of the team of people working behind the scenes.

Out of the glare of the stage lights, before and after the audience are in their seats, the team behind the action works to make everything seem effortless and easy.

Our esteemed Production Manager not only kept everyone in line, he also got down on his hands and knees to make sure everything was just right - as seen here before the show, under the watchful eye of the cheeky vacuum!

Backstage crew

Backstage, some camera-shy members of the busy crew prepared the meals for the show and ensured that the boiled egg and toast soldiers were "not too soft and not too hard"!

 

Picture Gallery

Photographs from productions are stored on the SmugMug.com site. The Balally Players SmugMug account allows for the viewing and downloading of images at various sizes if high resolution pictures have been uploaded. The slideshow below can be run and stopped by clicking on the play (>) and pause (¦¦) icons. You can move forward and back by clicking on the right or left of the image. To go to the gallery of these images stored in the Balally Players pages of the SmugMug site, where you can see and download larger copies of the images, visit www.balally.smugmug.com to see all of the available galleries of images.

 

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