The Rivals evaluate – heady, flapper-ish revival is stylishly foolish Christmas enjoyable | Theatre

Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s comedy is an ideal revival for the festive interval for its crowd-pleasing mixture of anarchic spirit, silliness and Sheridan’s personal panto dame within the word-mangling Mrs Malaprop.

Tom Littler’s 250th anniversary manufacturing transposes the 18th-century play’s upper-class antics to Nineteen Twenties Bath to present it a heady, flapper-ish vitality with occasional track and an exuberantly Charleston-ing forged. Littler equally tailored his manufacturing of She Stoops to Conquer to the interwar years, however now there are PG Wodehouse parts, most refined however one blatant reference to Jeeves and Wooster – Jack Absolute’s manservant, Fag (Pete Ashmore) is renamed Gieves.

The drama’s romances deliver the comedian shenanigans with Jack Absolute (Kit Young) parading because the lowly Sergeant Beverley to be able to woo Lydia Languish (Zoe Brough), a vibrant younger factor who romanticises the impoverished life whereas “Faulty” Faulkland (James Sheldon) emanates neurosis in his wobbly amours with Julia (Boadicea Ricketts). Patricia Hodge gives the malapropisms as Lydia’s imperious aunt who has a doubtful grasp on vocabulary. Rebellion ensues and duelling male bravado is shipped up, all earlier than Jack’s father, Sir Anthony Absolute (Robert Bathurst), reinstates old-school order.

It is all giddiness and froth, with an in a position forged, and Young a selected pleasure to observe for his physicality and velocity. There are some sparkly eyed meta theatrical moments and some up to date references that slip into the interval setting (one involving the TV sequence Traitors). Leah Harris’s motion course is coordinated immaculately with a fast-changing set designed by Anett Black and Neil Irish.

It is bubbly however not fairly champagne, missing the arduous, sharp kick of Sheridan’s satire on energy, class and poverty. The humour stays playful, unserrated across the edges, as if nothing greater than a sport. Hodge, in a pink froufrou hat, performs Mrs Malaprop with comedian breeziness and loads of hauteur however her model of the character lacks distinctive parts, and her romantic misfire with Lucius O’Trigger (Colm Gormley) doesn’t land in its pathos. This is a protracted play, and it slackens often. Yet it slips down simply and feels exceedingly nice as a complete; stylishly foolish, Christmas enjoyable and japes.