The Rivals

by Richard Brinsley Sheridan

seen at the Orange Tree Theatre Richmond on 8 December 2025

Tom Littler directs a revival of Sheridan's first really successful play to celebrate its 250th anniversary, re-setting it in the Wodehousian world of the 1920s, "about as modern as you can go," he says in a programme note, "before the plot makes no sense". (In any period it stretches the bounds of credulity, but that is partly its point.)

Kit Young plays Captain Jack Absolute, who has disguised himself as Sergeant Beverley to win the affections of Lydia Languish (Zoe Brough), a girl lost in dreams of romantic poverty inspired by reading sentimental novels. Their liaison has been discovered and forbidden by Lydia's aunt Mrs Malaprop (a wonderful Patricia Hodge, managing the lady's hilarious mangling of language with unerring dexterity). 

All very predictable, but the comedy intensifies when Mrs Malaprop and Jack's father Sir Anthony (Robert Bathurst) agree that Jack should marry Lydia (essentially for her fortune, so far as Sir Anthony is concerned). Jack at first refuses his father's overbearing pressure to marry under instruction, until he discovers who the intended bride is, and then he must juggle being Beverley and Jack to try to keep everyone happy, knowing that Lydia will not be impressed at being forced to marry a captain. Subplots abound, involving Lydia's cousin and Jack's friends, and Mrs Malaprop's clandestine flirtation via letters to the ludicrous Lucius O'Trigger (re-imagined as an American tycoon/"typhoon" rather than an Irish chancer).

The transition to the glamorous (and highly unrealistic) world of giddy young flappers bewildering their old-school elders works remarkably well, and the cast manage multiple scene changes in semi-darkness with consummate aplomb, blending the removal and replacement of furniture items with sophisticated dance-steps to bright 1920s-style music. The high level of energy and speed of delivery make for an invigorating and amusing evening, and the text, which could sound rather stilted if kept in its original 18th-century milieu, fizzed with the glitter of the play's updated setting.