STAGE REVIEW: How the Other Half Loves at the Festival Theatre, Malvern, from Monday, September 25, to Saturday, September 30, 2017.

THIS is one of the prolific Alan Ayckbourn’s earliest hits following, hard as it did, on the heels of the one that set him on the road to playwrighting success, Relatively Speaking.

We’re talking here of the late 1960s and it has to be said, relatively speaking, that the Other Half is beginning to look, sound and feel a little jaded after all these years.

It’s still worth taking down and given a dusting, but it is possibly in need of a bit of a boost - a buff up - in places, but nonetheless it is still quite an ingenious comedy-cum-farce and has some excellent moments of madness.

This is a suburban pot-pourri of sexual frustration and betrayal as three couples, from differing backgrounds are thrust together with all the pandemic pitfalls caused by wanton fibs, along with the husbands all working for the same company.

Alan Strachan's touring revival of his West End production also casts its eye over society and class.

Frank and Fiona Foster are on the top level, while the aspirationally with-it Bob and Teresa Phillips would like to get there. And somewhere in between are William and Mary Featherstone, a fuddy-duddy couple looking for better things but not sure which is the right path to follow.

Complications set in after Fiona and Bob have a late-night liaison leads to those little fibs. They attempt to cover their tracks - Fiona by pulling the wool over a befuddled Frank and Bob insisting to new new mum Teresa he was out with a work colleague.

Unfortunately their ‘foolproof’ alibi involves the unsuspecting William and Mary. Significantly this couple, who wouldn’t really say boo to a goose, then end up having dinner with each couple on consecutive nights. with hilarious consequences.

The dinner gatherings are brilliantly conceived by Ayckbourn and acted to perfection for the biggest laughs of the night.

The action in both the Foster and Phillips’ houses is played simultaneously, so the Featherstones swivel between the two dinner parties at the same time to great effect. But all round it’s a mix of technical dexterity as the cast of six sashay around each other - from one conversation and situation to the other.

Sara Crowe is in her element in a role tailor-made for her as she simpers to perfection as mousy Mary. You could almost feel it is her ‘birthday’ all over again!

That’s one for those of a certain age… There are other quality comic performances within the cast of six. Robert Daws is sufficiently bombastic and arrogant as the organiser Frank, while Caroline Langrishe, as his wife Fiona, knows how to lead him and keep him under control. Style in two different genres here All three marriages appear to be on their last legs in a play that is almost half a century old. Old enough, it could be argued, to be considered a period piece.

There are old landline telephones, relationships affected by sadness and frustration and linked to a time when the permissive society was in its hey-day. But there is still the feeling they will all survive the crisis.

It may be getting on in years but it’s still capable of amusing, entertaining and making you think.