Egad, what a simply spiffing time is to be had at the Orange Tree just now! Director Tom Littler has taken Sheridan's first play, and (with his associate Rosie Tricks) pruned and honed and moulded it into an even sparkier version of itself. The plot, the satire of manners, are still intact but now Lydia Languish, Jack Absolute, Mrs Malaprop et al inhabit the Bath, not of 1775 but 1927. This allows for a speediness of playing and a skipping pace, incorporating jazzy singing and frequent opportunities for Charleston moves, including during scene changes. There is literally never a dull moment.
Lydia Languish, Sheridan's heroine, is a headstrong teenaged heiress. Inspired by her reading of novels (here provided with racier titles) she imagines for herself a romantic marriage combining love with poverty. Her inamorato is the well-heeled officer, Captain Jack Absolute, who has presented himself to her in the guise of impoverished Ensign Beverley. Zoe Brough and Kit Young (pictured below right) make an attractive pair managing to walk a comic line between indulging in silly games and the beginning of true feeling.
If Lydia's chief rivals are, unbeknown to her, one and the same, other contenders complicate matters. Countryman Bob Acres, uncertain in his tailoring taste, painfully attempting the Charleston, is played with comic gusto by Dylan Corbett-Bader. An American tycoon (Irish in Sheridan's original) Lucius O'Trigger, a rootin', tootin' Colm Gormley, also enters the fray. The latter has been corresponding – he thinks – with Lydia, under the pseudonym Delia. In fact Lydia's guardian, her aunt Mrs Malaprop, is "Delia" and she believes herself to be the likely object of his desire. The person causing and aiding this confusion – failing to deliver or misdirecting missives, all at a price – is Lydia's sassy maid, Lucy, a smart operator in an easily overlooked position. Joëlle Brabban shows her cheerfully running rings around her "betters". Brabban also doubles in another role as a slinky nightclub chanteuse. Jealous but pusillanimous Acres challenges the non-existent Beverley to a duel and further confusion ensues.
Jack's father, Sir Anthony Absolute, lives up to his name in his unbending determination to marry off his son to a suitably wealthy heiress, none other than Miss Lydia Languish (although his choice is not, of course, clear at first). Robert Bathurst (pictured below left) utters his appalling opinions – including against the advisability of allowing women to read – and is apparently careless of his son's happiness, while remaining very funny with his adamantine prejudices mostly risible: a blustering buffer rather than a tyrant.
Jack's friend Faulkner (known here as Faulty) is in love with Sir Anthony's ward, Julia, but is wracked with jealousy whenever she is out of sight. These two are spared Sheridan's convoluted speeches about love and James Sheldon and Boadicea Ricketts make lively foils for Lydia and Jack. Sheldon's Faulty, all rosy cheeks and indecisive manner, could have stepped straight out of a Wooster scrape.
Gossiping servants, notably Jack Absolute's valet, Fag, often addressed as Jeeves in a nod to Wodehouse (Pete Ashmore), and Thomas, Sir Anthony Absolute's chauffeur (Jim Findley), provide the audience with information and speed the plot.
Magnificently at the centre of this mayhem is, of course, intellectually pretentious, word-mangling Mrs Malaprop. Some of her best-known substitutions are still here – "a very pineapple of politeness", "O, he will dissolve my mystery" – but others have been helpfully altered in the interest of clarity for a modern audience. Patricia Hodge, ever-elegant and still lovely, plays her with a beguiling mixture of purposeful certainty and baffled incomprehension. There is pathos as well as humour in the exposure of her failed attempt to find love.
This is a witty, knowing production, with the audience at all times included in the joke. Sitting on all four sides of the action, the front rows are sometimes even directly engaged: "Avert your eyes, Madam", instructs Faulty as Jack rises from his bubble bath, and Mrs Malaprop gets people to shove up so that she can hide behind a programme to eavesdrop on Lydia and Jack. Scenes, announced in projections above the stage, are set in a greasy spoon caff, a gentleman's outfitters, an expensive restaurant and even Bath Abbey as well as the expected interiors. There are references to cars and a telephone box and – even (throwing all period considerations to the wind) Traitors. Designers Annett Black and Neil Irish have conjured a fantasy Twenties world with attractive gilded Art Deco friezes and colourful period costumes, floaty for the women, tailored for the men.
Following the Orange Tree's recent seasonal offerings – a 1920s She Stoops to Conquer in 2023 and a glorious post-World War Two Twelfth Night in 2024 – The Rivals provides another mouthwatering mid-winter treat.
