THE 250th anniversary production of Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s immortal comedy The Rivals, sub-titled A Trip to Bath, comes “home” to the Theatre Royal as part of its 2026 tour.
The 23-year-old Sheridan was catapulted to success by the play, which held a mirror up to the preposterous antics of his day. So it is no surprise that Tom Littler, artistic director of the Orange Tree in Richmond, decided on an update to the Roaring Twenties and on taking Bridgertonesque licence with the story and its telling. The Rivals gave us Mrs Malaprop and this production has given the erudite Patricia Hodge free rein with as many malapropisms as she can cram into a speech – and hilarious it is, seeking out those little pools of laughter around the auditorium as different listeners show their own learning.
Set firmly in the Art Deco period, with its cocktails and nightclubs, stylish hotels, greasy spoons for the servant classes and energetic Charleston dancing, the story’s core is all about youthful exuberance and parental expectation, self-delusion and slavish fashion-following – things that never change. Young Mr Sheridan couldn’t be faulted as a psychologist.
Mrs Malaprop not only mangles the English language but falls in love with a much younger man. Here Lucius O’Trigger (who could hardly be an Irish noble in the 20s, when the country was in the grip of the War of Independence), is an American tycoon used to packing heat … and why not, considering the number of Irish people who had fled to the USA.
Kit Young’s hugely attractive Jack Absolute is a joy, his dancing the glittering decoration on a wonderful performance. Faulkland, here nicknamed Faulty, a la Wodehouse, is an early “new man”, all sensitive reticence and ridiculous faddishness. There’s even a nod to The Traitors!
Robert Bathurst’s Sir Anthony perhaps survives the transition best, as convincing a dictatorially unreasonable father in the original as in the 1920s (and the 2020s too). Bob Acres (Adam Buchanan) is as likeable as ever.
It’s all great fun, and demonstrates, as did Tom Littler’s award-winning She Stoops to Conquer at the Orange Tree, that truly great comedy never dates and is endlessly pliant to clever change.
GP-W
Photographs by Ellie Kurttz