The ‘Things We Do for Love’ Can Be Quite Surprising

A relatively new and conventional Alan Ayckbourn comedy, “Things We Do for Love,” is on the main stage at the Old Globe Theatre, arousing a lot of laughter but not quite taking off in the highflying manner of some of the master’s work.

Like many an Ayckbourn play, this one has a staging gimmick. In a London apartment building that’s on three floors, we see all of the middle floor--but only the lower three or four feet of the top floor and only a tiny sliver near the ceiling of the bottom floor. Initially, this is annoying. But it pays off royally during the first-act climax, when a surprising and hilarious seduction on the middle floor leads to bedroom action upstairs.

Acerbic, proud-to-be-single Barbara (Monique Fowler), whose former nickname was “Spiky,” invites a moony old school chum (Charlotte Booker) and her new love (Dennis Parlato) to move in upstairs while their own home is being renovated. Meanwhile, in the bottom flat dwells a postal carrier (Tom Lacy) with a secret crush on his landlady upstairs--an obsession that extends to painting his ceiling and decorating his flat with some reminders of her.

All of the characters are in for some major surprises, most of which are quite funny, and which shouldn’t be given away. The only problems are that the many details accumulate more slowly than you expect from a play of this kind, that nothing in the second act lifts the laugh meter as high as it gets just before intermission, and that the ending is a little unduly sunny.

* “Things We Do for Love,” Old Globe Theatre, Cassius Carter Centre Stage, Balboa Park, San Diego. Tuesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m.; Saturdays-Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends Sept. 2. $23 to $42. (619) 239-2255. Running time: 2 hours, 35 minutes.

Monique Fowler: Barbara Trapes

Dennis Parlato: Hamish Alexander

Charlotte Booker: Nikki Wickstead

Tom Lacy: Gilbert Fleet

Written by Alan Ayckbourn. Directed by Joseph Hardy. Set and lights by Kent Dorsey. Costumes by Marianna Elliott. Sound by Matthew Spiro. Stage manager Joel Rosen.