Full Cast and Creative Team Set For THE RIVALS at Orange Tree Theatre
Performances run 29 November – 24 January.
By: Stephi Wild Oct. 07, 2025
With Creditors currently running, and Tanika Gupta’s Hedda in rehearsals, Orange Tree Theatre has announced the full cast and creative team for the 250th Anniversary production of Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s comic classic The Rivals.
Artistic Director Tom Littler will direct Robert Bathurst and Patricia Hodge, alongside Pete Ashmore, Joëlle Brabban, Zoe Brough, Dylan Corbett-Bader, Jim Findley, Colm Gormley, Robert Maskell, Boadicea Ricketts, James Sheldon and Kit Young.
Tom Littler today said, “It’s a real pleasure to be working with this brilliant company on The Rivals. Each actor brings their own insight, energy, and creativity, and I’m excited to see how we’ll capture Sheridan’s humour and wit in the glamour and chaos of the Roaring Twenties.”
Following the run at the Orange Tree, The Rivals will then tour to Theatre Royal Bath (27-31 January 2026) and Cambridge Arts Theatre (3-7 February 2026).
Additional wrap-around programming for the autumn season includes the Northern Lights Festival; a programme of Scandinavian-inspired classics, contemporary works, and specially commissioned plays. These one-off lunchtime performances will run from 31 October to 21 November.
The festival opens with a double bill of comedies: J.M. Barrie’s Ibsen’s Ghost, poking fun at the scandals around the Norwegian master, and Joakim Pirinen’s The Good Family, a wry take on the perfect Scandinavian life. Contemporary plays follow with Astrid Menasanch Tobieson’s Night Passage and Alexander Maya Larsen’s Like Brothers, exploring migration and Nordic identity today. The season closes with August Strindberg’s matrimonial drama The First Warning and Sarah Sigal’s Kirkenes, a new play set on Norway’s Arctic border with Russia.
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