There is juxtaposition for comic effect and then there is Alan Ayckbourn's How the Other Half Loves. The play presents its different domestic worlds simultaneously: a well-to-do couple who barely communicate but keep up appearances impeccably, and a younger couple, who shout and seethe, and live in rampant squalor. We see both interiors, the houses and the couples' emotional tangles, at the same time, with the stage set formed as an inventive composite of the two. Watching them not collide, as they pass each other unwittingly and echo one another unknowingly, is a large part of the fun.
Most dramatists would have been happy with this, but Ayckbourn throws another couple into the dysfunctional mix: William and Mary, controlling and timid respectively, who become alibis for an affair linking the other couples. They are much more than a humorous plot device, though their swivelling between the two worlds - quite literally in the glorious dinner-party scene - is at the heart of the play's gleeful comedy. Ayckbourn uses them to show how well, in their own ways, the other couples actually muddle through.
The play is funny on paper, but in the right hands, as in this sublime production, it can be hilarious. Alan Strachan wrings every scrap of mirth and malice out of his strong cast's performances, led by Nicholas le Provost on tremendous form as hapless Frank Foster, and Marsha Fitzalan as his fantastically glacial and casually adulterous wife. Comedy's favourite fodder - deceit, coincidence, marriage, office politics, class hierarchies, and the full-scale horror that dinner parties can be - glitter here in a play that tips towards farce, but is restrained by the fierce intelligence of both Ayckbourn's writing and this spirited staging.
· Ends tomorrow. Box office: 01225 448844. Then at Malvern Festival Theatre (01684 892277), from August 27.
