Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The Rivals was first performed 250 years ago in 1775 and was a disaster. The script was then rewritten within eleven days and the comedy, which gently mocks sentimentality, has been a favourite with theatregoers ever since.
The great essayist William Hazlitt wrote, “There is scarcely a more delightful play than The Rivals when it is well acted, or one that goes off more indifferently when it is not.”
The text has been edited, rewritten and updated to 1927 by the director, Tom Littler. But it is still too long and the characters, caricatures of familiar 18th century types, don’t sound or feel right in a P G Wodehousian 20th century world.
The action is set in Bath. Lydia Languish, a silly romantic girl, expects to be treated like a heroine in a romantic novel. Her beau, Captain Absolute, obliges by wooing her in the guise of a penniless ensign, Sergeant Beverley, and plans an elopement.
Interestingly, Sheridan famously eloped with Elizabeth Linley, a singer, when he was 22 causing a scandal and a duel.
The scenes which work best are those between Jack (Kit Young) and his bad-tempered father (Robert Bathurst) and especially when he pretends a total indifference to Lydia’s beauty whilst his dad drools over every part of her body
The fraught love scenes between the neurotic Faulkland and the much put-upon Julia and the scenes involving the hot-headed Lucius O’Trigger, who is obsessed with duelling and honour, (and transformed in this production into an American millionaire) struggle to succeed and misfire badly when the action is set in a church.
The garrulous Mrs Malaprop, who takes enormous pride in her use of the English language, is one of theatre’s great comic roles. She is played by Patricia Hodge.
Audiences always presume that Mrs Malaprop uses the wrong word every time; but that is not necessarily true. The malapropisms work at two levels and are sometimes more apt than she and the audience realise. Tom Littler has cut the more obscure verbal blunders and added a few new ones.
The cast act as stage management and move the furniture during the scene changes, singing and charlestoning all the while. Kit Young’s dance solo is one of the high spots.
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