THE Edinburgh Makars have created an entertaining production of Alan Ayckbourn's How The Other Half Loves, without getting to grips with the complexities of a comedy that needs to do more than just sparkle.

The play revolves around three middle-class couples. The men all work in the same office department where Frank is the paternalistic head, Bob a slightly wayward assistant and the uptight William has just joined from accounts.

Irene Beldon and Andrew Hawdon create a snooty air as Frank and Fiona Foster. She is supercilious, he absent minded, although neither particularly convince as they begin to explore their characters.

Nicola Shepherd stands out as Teresa Philips. A natural Guardian reader, she is clearly the sort of woman who needs a cause to support. Derek Melon is also strong as her huffing and puffing, husband Bob – who isn't quite as downtrodden as he appears given that he is having an affair with Fiona.

Beatrice Cant as Mary Featherstone and Danny Henderson as her husband William make a strong showing of a couple who are aspiring to middle-class status. As the farce evolves and Frank wrongly suspects that Mary is having an affair with Bob, Beatrice Cant turns in the production's most accomplished performance as her character grows and changes.

Director Jo Barrow has taken a bold step in updating the play, written in 1969, to the present. In so doing she has made it more relevant in parts, but has not been totally successful. What has succeeded is the basic farce of marital infidelity. What is lost, however, and it is woefully missing, are all the surrounding elements of class that feed into the comedy, giving it depth and substance. At its most obvious, a joke about South African wine just sticks out in post-apartheid times. Less obviously, a whole strand of comedy about Teresa's Guardian reading predilections is missing.

There's plenty here to laugh at, but there could have been so much more.

Run ends Saturday