"How the Other Half Loves"

Theatre Review
"How the Other Half Loves" for Cortland Repertory Theatre
The Ithaca Journal
June 27, 2007
611 Words

"CRT's 'How the Other Half Loves' plays with setting"

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CRT's ‘How the Other Half Loves' plays with setting
By Mark Tedeschi
Special to The Journal



Six characters, three couples, suspicious spouses, mistaken identities.

A familiar formula, right? Add two houses in the same space, two nights at the same time, and for good measure, a flying pot of soup. Prolific playwright Alan Ayck-bourn understands the word “play” on a level all his own.

“How the Other Half Loves,” Cortland Repertory Theatre's latest production, sounds extremely complicated on paper, but Ayckbourn's masterfully subtle writing and the actors' brilliant comic timing, under the precise direction of Bill Kincaid (now in his fifth season at CRT), quickly yank the audience into the story and its complex concept.

“Loves” opens with two married couples in the 1970s pacing around a house decorated with furniture split in half — a different style on each side — courtesy of scenic designer Jo Winiarski. Frank Foster, an absentminded, mustachioed businessman played by Brian Runbeck, jogs around the abode, failing to pick up on his bored wife Fiona's (Stephanie Monsour-Nixdorf) obvious lies about her late-night whereabouts. Meanwhile, the vociferous Teresa Phillips (Jill Donnelly) and her wiseacre husband Bob (Dustin Charles) have a spat over a range of woes from Bob's late-night whereabouts to who should clean their recently prune-covered son.

That the couples don't hear or see each other may confuse initially, but the milieu solidifies after a telephone conversation between Frank and Bob: The two homes are transposed on top of each other.

Once he has the audience settled, Ayckbourn ups the ante. The Fosters and the Phillipses each invite the same couple to dinner on consecutive nights, and both nights occur on stage simultaneously. The Detweilers — ever-panicked William (Dominick Varney) and charmingly naïve Mary (Corrine Grover) — instantly change back and forth from feigned sophistication to terrified confusion. The chaos escalates and erupts, and the third act (back to only one day) consists mostly of Frank's painfully funny attempt at refereeing reconciliation.

Varney and Grover face a unique challenge in their flick-of-a-switch emotional ping-pong, but all six actors do a spectacular job at un-learning the basics of their craft. It's no easy feat for an actor to see or hear something on stage, hold back from reacting, and still recognize the cues. That task coupled with paying attention to audience response make for a pretty difficult endeavor. The actors in “Loves” pace their comedy with extraordinary coordination and cooperation.

Praise for the performances shouldn't detract from the look of the show, either. The kitschy art on the walls, the green-and-tan striped carpet, and the “shared” furniture create a fun space for the characters to play in (even the orange vacuum cleaner looks '70s). And in lieu of scouring vintage clothing shops for worn-out period garb, costume designer Jennifer Paar opted to make virtually all of the costumes herself; her crisp creations are fitting as well as impressive.

“Loves” was a hit at its original staging in London, but after some dialogue Americanization, the Broadway version attained only a mediocre run. Kincaid decided to give the characters back their British accents (they never falter, by the way), making the dialogue sound richer and more organic.

Attempting to give marital advice, Frank declares, “At times like this, I say to myself, ‘Frank, it's better than nothing.'” That's about as deep as anyone digs into the subtext of lifeless marriages, and it's a good thing.

The play doesn't forego its joy for the sake of gratuitous sentimentality, and in the end, the repentances are genuine and the merriment retained.

With the endearing characters, sharp parallels and overlaps, and a couple of excellent meta-references, Ayckbourn and the CRT company sustain all the hilarity of a well-executed farce with the exciting bonus of an imaginative presentation.

Mark Tedeschi graduated from Ithaca College this May with a degree in cinema and photography.