Although I love vinyl LPs, I must concede that one of the finest innovations in modern entertainment is Apple Music. They have over 50 million tracks, meaning I can listen to something different every day until I’m 137,048 years old!

Despite that, sometimes I just crave undemanding, feel-good tunes from my youth.  Likewise with comedy - the same yearnings for the retro-familiar surface periodically, and if it’s a bit of 1970s humour you fancy, How The Other Half Loves (Salisbury Playhouse, until 4th March) fits the bill.

For those unfamiliar with the play, it’s farce, of course, it is, it’s Alan Ayckbourn. The plot revolves around Bob and Teresa Phillips and Bob’s well-to-do manager, Frank Foster, and his wife Fiona. Surprise, surprise – Bob and Fiona are having an affair, and in an attempt to hide their horizontal assignations, they claim to have been spending time consoling another couple from Frank’s team, the bum-licking William Featherstone and his mousey wife Mary, who Bob and Fiona lyingly assert are themselves “playing away from home.”

Both couples invite the Featherstones to dinner, and the play follows these two dinner parties side-by-side on stage, an imaginative idea from Ayckbourn that is this play’s U.S.P.

The script is fast and witty, but while it’s trendy to say it’s still socially relevant, I’m afraid I don’t buy that. Its caricatures of character, snobbery and marriage are pure 1970s, and that’s as far as it goes – a decent timepiece, but entirely of its time.

Being farce, the acting isn’t the point, and only Haydn Oakley as the revolting, misogynistic Bob offers a performance that makes you care about his character: basically, he’s an obnoxious arse whom you detest throughout.

But the plot’s the thing and, being farce, you know what’s going to happen. Think of it as the theatrical equivalent of a 12 bar blues: after you’ve heard a few, you can hum along to ‘em all because you know how they work. Nevertheless, a blues played by Clapton remains something to savour and, in the same way, Ayckbourn is still the Hoochie Coochie Man of farcical silliness.

So, no surprises on offer, but there’s nothing not to like, either.  It is what it is, and it’s good at what it is. You should go along and see it if you fancy a straightforward, unchallenging chuckle. Because, amazingly, it’s not one of Apple Music’s 50 million.

Chris Parkinson-Brown