Where better to see Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s sparking comedy, The Rivals, than in the city in which it is set? Currently at Theatre Royal Bath following a London premiere earlier this month, and prior to a short run at Cambridge Arts Theatre, this new Noel-Coward-esque revival set in the Roaring Twenties and starring Robert Bathust and Patricia Hodge fully succeeded in banishing my winter blues and turned the occasion of the 250th anniversary of one of Sheridan’s most famous plays into quite some shindig.
The Dublin-born and Harrow-educated Sheridan reworked his first play, The Rivals, following a disastrous first night at the Covent Garden Theatre, only for the updated version to become a huge success when it was presented just a few days later. Now a standard of English literature, as is Sheridan’s later work, School for Scandal (1777), this production of The Rivals, set over the course of one spring day in Bath in 1927, features a modernised text – replacing such 18th century terms as ‘coachman’ for ‘chauffeur’ – whilst leaving all the energy and freshness that were Sheridan’s hallmarks.
Directed by Tom Littler, Artistic Director of Orange Tree Theatre, where the production opened earlier this month, despite the appealing set and costume design by Anett Black and Neil Irish, coupled with fun, well-choreographed 1920s dance routines interspersed between scenes, Sheridan’s style of humour and the contrived, operatic plot of The Rivals, involving the complicated love affairs of the upper classes and mistaken identity, won’t be something which the younger generation will easily digest, regardless of pretty flawless delivery. For those who can hang their scepticism at the door and immerse themselves in what is a frankly bonkers plot with misunderstandings within misunderstandings, there is a great deal to enjoy.
Patricia Hodge is in her element as the snobbish, ill-educated Mrs Malaprop, not only the play’s most famous character, but one who went on to lend her name to a term for an “amusing, unintentional error where a word is replaced by another that sounds similar but has a different meaning,” as in the case of “He is the very pineapple of politeness!” The Oxford English Dictionary’s earliest evidence for malapropism is from the 1830s, in the writing of the poet, journalist, and literary critic, Leigh Hunt and Hodge delivers each and every one with a lightness of touch by no means easy to achieve with any naturalness when the audience are hanging on your every word ready to chuckle at the next misapplication.
And there are just as many laugh-out-loud moments thanks to Robert Bathurst’s fine performance as Sir Anthony Absolute; the deliciously pompous father of Captain Jack Absolute (Kit Young) whom he threatens to cut off without a penny if the young man disobeys him when, having offered to gift him an estate and independence, he almost forgets to mention that he has also found him a suitable bride which he insists must be part of the package, ‘If you have the estate, you have to take the livestock with it!’
As luck would have it, the bride Sir Absolute has in mind turns out to be the very same young woman to whom Jack has already given his heart, although the course of true love never runs smooth and he finds himself in something of a pickle considering that he’s been wooing Lydia Languish (Zoe Brough) as the lower ranking Sergeant Beverley, believing that the romance-novel-loving niece of Miss Malaprop would be far more likely to fall in love under the pretext of a future elopement prompted by her aunt’s disapproval.
Lydia has also won the ardour of Jack Absolute’s pal, Bob Acres (Adam Buchanan) and a brash American gangster, Lucius O’Trigger, who has never met the young lady, but has been wooed by the flamboyant letters which he little realises have been penned by Mrs Malaprop. Further romance is afoot between Lydia’s cousin Julia Melville (Boudicea Ricketts) and Jack Absolute’s extraordinarily oversensitive ‘Faulty’ Faulkland (James Sheldon), a man in need of constant reassurance and who easily succumbs to jealousy when Julia teases him. With the fast-paced action occurring in a greasy spoon, the suite of Mrs Malaprop’s luxury hotel, a gentlemen’s outfitter, a fancy restaurant, Bath Abbey and outside the Theatre Royal Bath itself, the audience were suitably enthusiastic in their applause on press night and fully appreciated this happy-go-lucky production of The Rivals which is as imaginative as Sheridan’s comic writing.
The Rivals at Theatre Royal Bath until 31st January 2026 before touring to Cambridge Arts Theatre 3rd -7th February 2026. Running time is approximately 2 hours 30 minutes including an interval. For more information and tickets please visit the website. Production images by Ellie Kurttz.
