To quote Patricia Hodge’s much-loved character in the television sitcom Miranda: “This play is such fun!” Directed by Tom Littler, this updated version of The Rivals is set in Bath in 1927, and it works beautifully. The comedy is now readily understandable, very funny and the whole thing is a delight. Patricia Hodge is a definitive Mrs Malaprop.
Robert Bathurst as Sir Anthony Absolute has precision comic timing. Add to that a stunning Kit Young who gives a flowing performance full of panache including some lovely, lovely dancing. If he is ever in a dance show, I want to see it.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s play, first premiered in 1775 and, like this show, was set in Bath. It is thought to have been inspired by a real-life love story with Sheridan as a principal character.
The celebrated singer Eliza Linley, who lived in Bath, sought refuge from the unwanted attentions of a married man. Sheridan accompanied her to a convent in France but on the way, they married in secret.
The unwanted suitor, a Captain Matthew, slandered Sheridan calling him a treacherous scoundrel. Sheridan reacted by challenging Matthews to a duel.
The play is light and a satire on almost every single one of the characters.
Kit Young’s character Captain Jack Absolute, who is in line to inherit a fortune, pretends to be a poor soldier called Beverly of much lesser rank to woo rich heiress Lydia Languish (played by Zoe Brough) who thinks it would be terribly romantic to elope and live in poverty – having possibly got that impression from the romantic novels she reads with feverish compulsion.
When Jack’s father (Robert Bathurst) and Lydia’s aunt (Patricia Hodge’s Mrs Malaprop) betroth the couple, neither of them knows who it is they are supposed to be marrying. Lydia refuses to even look at her new suitor out of devotion to her beloved Ensign Beverly.
When Lydia finds out that “Beverly” and Jack are the same person, she is horrified at the deception, which she declares has been practiced upon her by all around her. How is Jack going to persuade her to forgive him?
Alongside that, Lydia’s cousin Julia (Boadicea Ricketts) is engaged to foolish fop “Faulty” Faulkland (James Sheldon – another fine performance) who keeps testing her out with absurdly false situations to see if her love is real.
She passes all the tests but is enraged by his doubting her.
And if that isn’t enough, Mrs Malaprop herself is being courted with an exchange of letters by an American businessman down on his luck, called Lucius O’Trigger who thinks he is writing to young Lydia. Sheridan’s original O’Trigger was an Irishman, whose portrayal was criticised as an offensive. So Irish jokes didn’t go down well in the eighteenth century either but now we don’t mind ones about Americans.
Of course, it all ends well as each deception is deliciously unravelled, untangled and forgiven. There is some lovely singing and dancing as we go along, loads of humour and a clever set.
This is an excellent version of a play criticised in its time for being too long, too lascivious, and too absurd.
Perhaps what Sheridan needed was a good editor.
Now he has one.
The Rivals is at Cambridge Arts Theatre until Saturday, February 7.
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