Review: THE RIVALS, Orange Tree Theatre

After staging a charming version of Oliver Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer two years ago, the Orange Tree's Tom Littler brings us Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s 250-year-old comedy The Rivals. Like She Stoops to Conquer, Littler, along with associate Rosie Tricks, has almost rewritten the play, updating much of the language and making the setting the Wodehousian 1920s.

It's 1927; Bath is a hotbed of social change where Victorian values brush up against the new Jazz age. Captain Jack Absolute pretends to be penniless to win the heart of romance-obssessed Lydia Languish, but Jack's father Sir Anthony and Lydia's aunt Mrs Malaprop have other ideas about their future partners. With mistaken identities, confused courtships and challenges to social norms, chaos ensues.

For fans of P.G Wodehouse, there are little nuggets hidden everywhere; from the A-board outside Bath's Theatre Royal proclaiming a talk about the Drones Club; one character's  book about newts; references to Rosie M Banks's Only A Factory Girl and, most obviously, the update to Fag's name being Frederick Arnold Gieves-geddit?

The updates create a few issues. Irish Sir Lucius O’Trigger is now a brash American, with little sign that Mrs Malaprop has fallen passionately in love with him. Despite the fact that fighting a duel was both obsolete and illegal in 1927, Littler has chosen to retain it as a key plot point. It's such a lively and frothy production that some of Sheridan's sharp satire is lost, but I expect most audience members will be having enough fun to be more than willing to suspend their disbelief.

It's a pacy show, despite its length of nearly two and half hours. Scenes are nicely punctuated with characters dancing the Charleston (credit to movement director Leah Harris) and lively, brassy, jazz-inspired music. Anett Black and Neil Irish have gone all-out on costumes, with sharp tailoring, slinky fabrics and wonderful plummage for Mrs Malaprop's hats.

With twelve actors, this is the largest cast for a production at the theatre for a decade, but Littler's deft direction means the space never feels too crowded or confused. Kit Young makes a charming, quick-witted and very engaging Jack Absolute, bouncing off a capricious Zoe Brough as Lydia. There's also lovely work from the second romantic couple, Julia and Faulty, played by an engaging Boadicea Ricketts and a very funny, overblown James Sheldon.

At 79-years-young, Patricia Hodge takes on the role of Mrs Malaprop as if she was born to play her. Hodge makes sense of the script's meaning, even if the words themselves do not, with fluency and efficiency-it's a brilliant performance. Robert Bathhurst is another big name draw for the show and he appears to revel in the comedy of his role, softening his furious outbursts into something funnier to watch.

For Sheridan purists, the show may land awkwardly, but for the rest of us, there are much fun and frolics down in Richmond just now.

The Rivals is running at the Orange Tree Theatre until 24 January, before touring to Theatre Royal Bath and Cambridge Arts Theatre