How the Other Half Loves

How the Other Half Loves

City Theatre, 3823 Airport, 524-2870, www.citytheatreaustin.org

Through April 18

Running time: 2 hr., 40 min.

The Fosters have money. Frank Foster focuses on his health and his job, where he's considering promoting a promising young man named William Featherstone. Fiona Foster focuses

on spending Frank's money and her affair with another of his employees, Bob Phillips. Bob and his wife, Teresa, have considerably less money than the Fosters, as well as a new baby. While Teresa suspects something's not right with Bob, Bob makes excuses about being out with William, who Bob says suspects his wife, Mary, is having an affair. But Frank is clueless about Fiona, who says she has stayed out until all hours of the morning with Mary, who Fiona says suspects her husband, William, is having an affair.

Sounds like a sex farce. Which is what this surprisingly still quite fresh Alan Ayckbourn work is. Ayckbourn has the play take place in the Foster household and the Phillips household at the same time, so the surprisingly effective if somewhat low-budget set is split into two halves, with one half looking like the Fosters' and one half looking like the Phillips'. But the actors treat the entire stage as if it were one house, which allows for the employment of simultaneous and often quite entertaining action, especially in a series of phone calls in the first act and two dinner parties occurring on two consecutive nights, played with the Featherstones having to eat dinner in both houses at once.

One thing that director Stacey Glazer does very well in this City Theatre Company production is keep the action moving. The play clocks in at well over two hours, but it doesn't feel that long because Glazer has coached her actors well. Not all of them are perfect for their roles, but all of them push the tempo and, more often than not, trust the drama in Ayckbourn's script just enough to take time and let moments play out where needed. As a group, they also commit to what seems to be Glazer's vision of the play: a high-energy, physically stereotyped, really quick farce. Another great success of the production is the accent work. Any accent work can be a challenge for a community theatre, and the accents are not only consistent, they also delineate character and help the audience make sense of the relationships.

As with any live theatre presentation, it's the actors who ultimately make the show, and here it's especially Derek Jones as the more than slightly randy Bob and Lori Cordova as the bullish Teresa, whose tension often snaps in very entertaining ways. One of the performances could be viewed almost as one-note, but Scot Friedman as the priggish, clueless, yet ultimately wise Frank plays a very entertaining note. Louise Martin as Fiona and Jenny Keto and Tyler Jones as the young Featherstones also contribute to the show's success, and while it might have been interesting to see a production of this relatively old script that tilted just a bit more toward realism and sexuality, quick-tempoed, well-handled sex farces like this one always entertain.