How The Other Half Loves (Old Vic, London) Rating: Four out of five stars Cats (Open Air Theatre, Regent’s Park) Rating: Four out of five stars Alan Ayckbourn’s ingenious 1969 comedy How The Other Half Loves is a theatrical marvel.While much of the comic business depends on landlines, class snobbery and frustrated wives chained to the sink, this farcical but forensic dissection of three miserable marriages has a timeless capacity to amuse.Thanks, in Philip Breen’s fluent but far from flawless revival, to Roger Allam.Wearing a white vest tucked into patterned Y-fronts, his double-chin wobbling like blancmange, umming and erring, hopelessly and hilariously inept, he oozes pomposity as Frank while always getting the wrong end of the stick.’Not much gets past me,’ he boasts, as absolutely everything does. His wife, Fiona, has come home at 2am, forgetting their wedding anniversary.Meanwhile, on the same set, but in a different house, her lover Bob (Rowan Polonski) is bullying his bored wife Terry (a feisty Ayesha Antoine).Breen’s overlong production takes its time, climaxing when the two couples invite the Featherstones, used as scapegoats for the affair, to dinner on consecutive nights which overlap simultaneously at the same table.Mary and William Featherstone swivel dizzily on their dining chairs. Fiona serves avocado, Terry slops out packet soup – which finishes up all over William. Roger Allam’s oozes pomposity as Frank in Alan Ayckbourn’s How The Other Half LovesWhat’s missing is the truthful emotional subtext that underpins and powers Ayckbourn’s superbly orchestrated chaos.There’s not a whiff of attraction between Dorothy Atkinson’s unflappable Fiona and Rowan Polonski’s cocky, brutish Bob.Laura Elsworthy’s catatonically shy, mousey Mary is an implausible caricature. As is Adam Gillen’s clenched, controlling and cruel William.Desperate for a wee, he writhes with physical discomfort without suggesting for one second what he is really feeling: agonised embarrassment at having to say the word ‘toilet’ to his much posher boss Frank (who refers to loo paper as ‘bathroom stationery’).Roger Allam’s blissful study in blind befuddlement alone is in a comedy class of its own.Following the success of Relatively Speaking, How The Other Half Loves was proof that Ayckbourn was not a one-hit wonder.Similarly, Jesus Christ Superstar put Andrew Lloyd Webber on the musical map… and then he smashed it with Cats in 1981. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats is staged at the open air theatre in Regent’s ParkFor decades, that unmistakable poster – yellow eyes on a black background – flashed from the sides of London buses.Where better but the outdoors for the first new staging of this cat-tastic, dream-like musical?Gone are the faux-fur and legwarmers of old. Director and choreographer Drew McOnie has poured his felines into body-stockings, some sleek, others moggy, all with unappealing skinny, rat-like tails.Based on TS Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book Of Practical Cats, this ridiculous, plotless hairball of a show is more of a catalogue of characters, with their contrasting dance styles – and Lloyd Webber’s wonderful mix of jazz, rock, funk and bouncy music hall melodies – expressing their various personalities.As these creatures of the city come out at night to crouch, slink, stalk, prowl, lope and leap by the light of a huge moon of rusted steel, there’s much to delight. So much so that a critical clawing for what it’s not seems inappropriately catty.While Gary Wilmot’s theatre cat Gus, an old windbag, is upstaged by his patchwork coat, Rachel Wooding’s faded glamour-puss Grizabella lights up Memory-lane with her belting voice.Loudest catcalls for Danny Nattrass’s Mungojerrie and his cat-burgling partner in crime Rumpleteazer (Briana Craig).And Jet Yau’s glittering, silver and black street-dancing Mr Mistoffelees, as magic as only a magician can be, swivelling on his head and spraying showers of sequins. And Jaydon Vijn’s cocky Jagger-like alley cat, Rum Tum Tugger.A rapturous audience, some in leopard-print and cat-eared hairbands, lapped it up.Both shows run until September 19. Cats starts a UK and Ireland tour in Plymouth on October 6.Edinburgh Picks: A mesmerising trial and other festival highlightsBy Veronica LeeOnce the scrappy offshoot of the Edinburgh International Festival, the Fringe has, over the years, grown like Topsy to completely overshadow its parent.So it’s nice to be able to sing the praises of something at the EIF for a change.Wagner Moura, best known for Narcos and The Secret Agent, brought A Trial – After An Enemy Of The People (Lyceum, three out of five stars), his modern-day Portuguese-language version of Ibsen’s play, which he co-created and stars in, to the festival.It’s set in a Brazilian spa town where Moura, the local doctor, warns the water is contaminated by industrial waste. He is put on trial for endangering the town’s prosperity by his brother, the mayor (Danilo Grangheia).Much of it, particularly the brothers’ impassioned exchanges, felt one-note. Moura, however, was mesmerising, and almost made one forget the show’s bladder-bursting two-and-a-half-hour running time – without an interval. Almost.A trial of a different sort inspired Amanda Knox: Cartwheel (Gilded Balloon, two out of five stars), in which the American talks about her life before and after being twice convicted and acquitted of the murder of her British flatmate Meredith Kercher in Italy in 2007.It’s her story, and she has a right to tell it, but Knox was poorly advised to put this show in the Comedy section. The subject is not funny, she’s not funny – and the script is definitely not funny. Amanda Knox, twice convicted and acquitted of the murder of her British flatmate Meredith Kercher in Italy in 2007, was ill-advised to put her Edinburgh show in the Comedy sectionA masterclass on how to turn tragedy into comedy is given by Frankie McNair, an Australian making her Fringe debut with Huge Ass Mindset (Gilded Balloon, four out of five stars). She tells an extraordinary tale of being a child sex abuse survivor, and more recently, getting sober.It’s truly shocking. But somehow the ebullient McNair packs in a stream of hooting gags as she describes her journey (still ongoing) to recovery – and there’s an astonishing rug pull in the final section.The show is moving to Soho Theatre in London next month; catch it if you can.Chris Cantrill: Rewilding (Monkey Barrel, four out of five stars) is, funnyman Cantrill insists, ‘not a political show’. Instead, the smiley, bespectacled, self-deprecating comedian, part of the writing team of the successful debut run of SNL UK, tells us about his life in a Northumbrian village.At first it seems a bucolic tale. But then a shocking event occurs. What Cantrill describes may or may not have happened, but the show is utterly daft and engaging, and you will definitely leave smiling.Among the Traverse Theatre’s mixed bag of premieres, For Dolores (Four out of five stars) stands out. It’s a two-hander written by Irish playwright Eva O’Connor and directed by Jim Culleton.Working-class Glaswegian Mo (Catriona Faint) and middle-class IrishwomanRealtin (Lara McDonnell) had an intense relationship at university. A few years on, they are sitting in a therapist’s office squabbling… over what, exactly, only gradually emerges.It’s melodramatic in parts, but this is a sharply witty study of love, loss and friendship, with two terrific performances.The Edinburgh International Festival runs until August 30 (eif.co.uk); the Fringe till August 31 (edfringe.com).