How The Other Half Loves: Reviews

Find out what the critics had to say about Roger Allam’s performance as Frank Foster in How The Other Half Loves at The Old Vic, London…

The suburban romp of envy and infidelity in two different homes comes bouncing back to life with a fizzing cast led by Roger Allam… Roger Allam’s Frank, managerial pomposity concealing kindness, has a magnificent scene as a hapless marital Poirot, wildly mis-summarising who was in which room with whom when.

★★★★ The Guardian, Alan Ayckbourn’s ingenious farce brings the houses down

The actor’s every pause, every hesitation, every bumbled phrase is a delight in this Old Vic revival of Alan Ayckbourn’s 1969 marital comedy. (…) Whether he’s simply putting on his raincoat or making an entrance in his underpants, you can’t take your eyes off Roger Allam.

★★★★ The Times, Roger Allam gives a comic masterclass

★★★★ The Telegraph, Roger Allam brings the biggest laughs to Ayckbourn’s tour de force

…a stellar turn from Roger Allam
★★★★ Westend Theatre, Roger Allam dazzles in a masterful Ayckbourn revival 

Allam’s Frank is a joy, a man lost in the mists of his own self-esteem, who can make a tediously detailed instruction on how to find the bathroom into a masterclass in comic timing.

★★★★ The Financial Times, Alan Ayckbourn’s marriage farce is toe-curlingly enjoyable

Roger Allam is outstanding in this deft revival of Ayckbourn’s early comedy of suburban infidelity

★★★ London Evening Standard, Serves up chuckles and winces with aplomb

Roger Allam relishes in sending up Frank’s public school pompousness, bobbing around like a stiff-necked owl, haplessly exacerbating the confusion with his amateur sleuthing.

★★★★ Broadway World, Review: How the Other Half Loves

In an excellent cast, Roger Allam is a standout as befuddled Frank; totally confident in his own incorrect knowledge, but also fixated by the most mundane things. His focus on a broken toothbrush and his dry description of how Frank can get to the bathroom manage to be simultaneously tedious and hilarious: a task that would fail in lesser hands.

★★★★ Whatsonstage, How the Other Half Loves at the Old Vic – review

Roger Allam shines in a slick revival of Alan Ayckbourn’s innovative Sixties comedy

★★★★ The Independent, Merciless comedy turns marriage into an instrument of torture

If Roger Allam considers this a “little script”, there’s no sign of it in his Frank. He commits his heart and soul, stumbling around like a clueless Columbo with always one more question on his lips for his wife.

★★★★ Quintessential Review, How the Other Half Loves

Allam gives what is surely the comic per­form­ance of the year, par­tially delivered – as in all good farces – in his Y-fronts and a vest.

★★★★★ The Daily Mail, How The Other Half Loves

Roger Allam delivers a comedic ‘masterclass’ opposite the ‘majestically withering’ Dorothy Atkinson.

The Week UK, How the Other Half Loves: an ‘ingeniously crafted’ reboot

But it’s the brilliant comic performances that make this thing tick. Allam is superb as Frank, who potters around guilelessly in a pair of alarming short shorts, and whose seeming genuine innocence about what is going on is tempered by a ponderous but unstoppable train of thought that an increasingly panicked Fiona can see trundling alarmingly towards her.

TimeOut UK, How the Other Half Loves

Setting the Scene || Behind the Scenes || Get Your Tickets