FringeReview UK 2026
The Rivals
Orange Tree Theatre
Genre: Adaptation, Classical and Shakespeare, Comedy, Costume, Drama, Live Music, Theatre
Venue: Orange Tree Theatre Richmond
Festival: FringeReview UK
Low Down
A pineapple of perfection? Pretty near it. Following the Orange Tree’s 2023 quarter-millennial of She Stoops to Conquer in 2023, the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Sheridan’s 1775 debut The Rivals also directed by Tom Littler plays till January 24.
As polished a Sheridan gem as I’ve ever seen.
Review
A pineapple of perfection? Pretty near it. Following the Orange Tree’s 2023 quarter-millennial of She Stoops to Conquer in 2023, the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Sheridan’s 1775 debut The Rivals also directed by Tom Littler plays till January 24. Like that revival, this is set between the wars. After Richard Bean’s and Oliver Chris’s touching 1940-themed homage Jack Absolute Flies Again in 2022, it’s salutary to see how a revival, not rewrite tackles an update. Led by Patricia Hodge and Robert Bathurst this cast glitters with the cut of several Orange Tree regulars. It’s as polished a Sheridan gem as I’ve ever seen.
There’s a reason it’s set in a recognisably P.G. Wodehouse world of 1927: not just because, as Littler acknowledges, it’s the latest possible moment for semi-arranged marriages. And the first one for bubble-baths. Brief nudity? Wait. This production’s generous too with its twelve-strong cast. Joëlle Brabban’s sparky maid Lucy opens and closes as a nightclub singer whose catchy pastiche ‘Being in Love’ written by sound designer and composer Tom Attwood (to Richard Hough’s lyrics) earworms all the way home. Romance and rebellion are promised, but this is straight up and bendy Orange Tree vintage: so character and language sparkle, and there’s a touching core of truth.
In filleting the play to two hours 20 with short interval, Littler follows Sheridan. After the disastrous premiere Sheridan publicly acknowledged the newspaper critics and cut with a drastic rewrite. Bowing to Georgian sensibilities Sheridan also bowdlerised his own bawdy. Littler has brought a bit back. We’re not going to have Sir Anthony incredulous that his apparently cold son might eschew “the arms of such glowing beauty – to lie like a cucumber on a hot bed.” Such innuendo’s too, um long. There’s penetration elsewhere, restoring the sense of one “mystery”. Instead Littler and (I assume) associate script editor Rosie Tricks tweak and add delicious updates, including “erotical” and others worth not spoiling. Lydia’s library novels are updated too. Most subversively The Well of Pleasure, whooped up by Lydia in the very year The Well of Loneliness had splenetic reviewer James Douglas “rather give a healthy boy or a healthy girl a phial of prussic acid (cyanide!) than this novel.” And Littler and Hodge’s Mrs Malaprop even adopt Geraldine McEwan’s ad-lib “Men are all Bavarians” from the 1983 National Theatre revival.
Hodge doesn’t guy Malaprop, but with gleaming precision plucks out of the fudge of her mystery. She strips the absurd accretions of panting older lover (that century-old Restoration cruelty Sheridan also gentled), and panto tyrant. So in this production Malaprop’s ‘Delia’ letters don’t come back to sting her quite so sharply; her erotic disappointment is recessed. This Malaprop aspires more to control her environment and words. When she calls Lydia “a little intricate hussy” for “ingrate” it sounds more acute (almost sensing Lydia’s romantic notions of poverty), more apt. And Sir Anthony sometimes is “a complete misanthropy” not just misanthrope. But the glory and innate sexism of Malaprop’s language is that her reach exceeds her grasp. Or what’s a dictionary for?
Bathurst’s Sir Anthony with his contrariness is neatly done: he’s both furious at his son’s demurrals and equally that he won’t stand up to him. Bathurst too refuses blusterbuss absurdity with both barrels. This removes a little danger from his character, but he’s of a piece with Malaprop: again the panto despot father is thankfully retired.
Boadicea Ricketts’ Julia is able to touch notes of near tragedy, especially in the now-transposed Bath Abbey scene. Her warmth with Lydia aside, her degrees of testing from a jealous fiancé lends her pathos: Ricketts quietly emphasises the most painful character with dignity her intended doesn’t deserve. Indeed with James Sheldon, now ‘Faulty’ Faulkand (sporting a new soubriquet), a blather of jealousy starts out with donnishly awkward bonhomie. You don’t believe he can turn so obsessively, but he does, and Sheldon probes his dark compellingly. As realised here there’s a sunnier side we’ve not seen before; his repentance casts believable shadows over it.
Beyond Brabban’s “simplicity” and delicious monologue (she really is paid on both sides) there’s a delight in mischief and a pointed independence, as if Lucy’s a moonlighter whose slinky, smoky soprano stars up the bars when off the leash, and everyone knows it.
Zoe Brough’s Lydia too sets rational outrage beyond flights of poverty, though they’re pointed up too. Two years on she’d not be saying such things. Though captivating everyone in romantic highs and lows, Brough brings out Lydia’s toughness and sharp-wittedness; perhaps with less fatalism. There’s flint in her ripostes to plot-bettered elders. It’s not 1775, she can find a job.
Though her intended has one, his ‘recruiting’ is glossed over swiftly. Kit Young’s Captain Jack is at first almost smugly knowing. Young prances a tightrope between complacency and dare, and tumbles to sincerity. This Jack can act out at his father or Lydia, but his exasperation with Faulkland is sincere, his desperation over Lydia touching. “MA Oxon” as he preens in his bath (a fantastical moment as ‘Fag’ shields him and commands us not to look as he eases out of it) announces strategy. With a formal cut.
And ‘Fag’ is now Frederick Arnold Gieves (Pete Ashmore), a superior gentleman’s gentleman, though not serving a Wooster. There’s now a conniving spark of equals between Gieves and Jack, pointed up by Ashmore with the way he regales fellow servants – not least Thomas, who in Jim Findley’s hands is warm and wry. Robert Maskell as Bob Acres’ servant David contrasts their city complacency: a lamenting careworn opposite the city men. And Dylan Corbett-Bader’s Bob Acres is someone to care about, in psychedelic blazer and absurd attire. More youthful (he should be too, if a friend of Jack’s) his wonderfully querulous squirming after being put up to duelling is more telling than his amorousness.
Colm Gormley’s Lucius O’Trigger really does blast in from Wodehouse’s American invasion of “typhoons” as this Malaprop has it: and that’s apt too. Gormley’s urbanity is less deadly-seeming than the original, but what he avoids is stock loudness. There’s a believable streak of tactics, from someone who knows civil limits and how to break them. But as with everyone here, there’s more warmth than chill.
Neil Irish’s and Anett Black’s sleekly minimal set grounds a period map in undistracting shades. Over which – conjured by Leah Harris’s neatly-blocked cast – a series of props announces new locations. It’s aided by a surtitle strip, not always ideally clear. For Sheridan’s bland succession of North and South Parades Littler has substituted a handsome gentleman’s outfitters (for a street), a minimal inn (one exit sign to trip over) and natty five-piece Bath Abbey (four pews and a red carpet): with a very 2020s pay-off. William Reynolds’ lighting penetrates accordingly (we’ll get that in the language). Key scenes – Lydia’s sofa and the climactic Kingsmead Fields – are observed: but this is altogether fresher.
Every scene’s repointed too, characters brightened to the era of Young Things, lent an air of fop and frolic. Jack’s uniform is still accurately First War. No 1930s shadows stretch here, even if the army was then less present in Bath. Though lacking the last ounce of the dramatist’s period social bite, this is inevitable in this production’s rationale. As is the removal of the elders’ tyrannical danger, and servants’ sting of precarity. This though is in keeping with Sheridan’s more ameliorative vision. It’s not Congreve or Farquhar (despite the recruiting trope). Though stylistically (like the Goldsmith) Littler’s is a Christmastide vision of spring, it’s as chiselled as Sheridan’s lines, as faceted as his consummate artificiality. With other anniversaries of Sheridan’s beckoning over the next four years, there’s hope such lightning might strike this ground at least twice more.
Though sold out, there’s a Friday Rush scheme, and (tba) three days of post-run screening from the Orange Tree site.
Studio Musicians Joe Pickering (Percussion), George Shrapwell (Reeds). Associate Musical Director/Sound Designer and Song Composer Tom Attwood, Lyrics Richard Hough
Voice Coach Nick Trumble, Assistant Director Freya Griffiths, Costume Supervisor, Emma Kylmala, Wigs & Hair Supervisor Chris Smyth, Casting Consultant Ginny Schiller CDG, Associate Script Editor Rosie Tricks
Production & Technical Director Phil Bell, CSM Jade Gooch, DSM Lisa Cochrane, ASM Charlotte Smith-Barker, Stage Management Intern Asher Musgrave-Wood, Milliner Jane Smith, Props Support Irene Saviozzi Thomas Manly.
Production Technicians Andy Owen Cook, Priya Virdee.
