Cast

Synopsis

Picture Bath in the late 1770s when the well-born and the well-to-do came to drink the spa waters and enjoy a gentle social season. Look a little closer and you can see the gentlemen strutting their stuff in breeches and boots whilst the ladies are brought up to be decorative but uneducated, except for playing the pianoforte and sketching. Probe deeper still and you will be caught up in an eighteenth century “soap” of lovers’ tiffs, misunderstandings and improbable schemes to test each other’s love where no one ever explains their actions or says clearly what they feel. Throw in the overbearing mother, the dictatorial father, a few servants who are playing the system for their own ends, whisk with frantic activity and enjoy a hugely entertaining frothy farrago of nonsense liberally sprinkled with malapropisms.

Directors Notes

It is a toss-up between ‘The Rivals’ and ‘The School for Scandal’ for the accolade of Sheridan’s greatest play, but to my mind ‘The Rivals’ is the funnier of the two. It is certainly a masterpiece of comic invention, especially when one realises that the author was only 24 when he wrote this, his first play.

Although like his successors, Wilde and Shaw, Sheridan was born in Dublin, he wisely writes within his own experience and sets the play in Bath, where he lived for some years. He eloped with a local beauty, an event planned by characters in the play, and he even fought a couple of duels over her – again threatened in ‘The Rivals’. But above all this is a play full of wonderful character creations: the vitriolic Sir Anthony Absolute, the ludicrous rustic Bob Acres and, outstandingly, one of the greatest creations any playwright has dreamt up – Mrs. Malaprop.

Let the fulsome language and absurd conventions waft you back to 1775 for an evening of amusing charm.

Incidentally, if you know the play well you might spot large numbers of cuts in the text. Mr. Sheridan was a rather over- generous playwright and we’d prefer you to be homeward bound before midnight !