Theatre review: How the Other Half Loves

It's a cliché about farce that it relies heavily on characters running in and out of multiple doors, but most of Alan Ayckbourn's plays have premiered in the round. Maybe this is why he came up with his signature style of incredibly technically convoluted comedies that include conceits like time travel and multiple interlocking plays telling one big story. The latter, The Norman Conquests, was the first show to get the Old Vic specially reconfigured, and after quite a lengthy in-the-round season at the end of Matthew Warchus' tenure we get the playwright's return with How the Other Half Loves: This is the one whose high concept is multiple overlapping scenes, some taking place simultaneously, one 24 hours apart at two dinner parties - and in Phillip Breen's production, Rob Howell's design has the dinner tables literally overlap.Fiona Foster (Dorothy Atkinson) returns home at 3am; in another house that shares the same living room set, Bob Phillips (Rowan Polonski) does the same. Bob's…