No one goes to a comedy of manners to see straightforward feelings unambiguously expressed between emotionally literate characters. But Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s 1775 play drinks so deep from the well of veiled sentiments that it inspired a new word — malapropism.
Mrs Malaprop, played by Celia Imrie in this always spirited, not always focused, production, earns the bulk of the play’s laughs. “He is the very pineapple of politeness,” she says of her niece’s suitor, Captain Jack Absolute. And though she means “pinnacle”, actually her word suggests that somewhere she knows just what a prickly sort Jack really is.
The Rivals is a study in caprice, which needs performances as sincere as they are playful if it’s not to appear inconsequential.
Jessica Swale’s production starts boldly, adding an 18th-century take of Beyonc?’s Single Ladies, played by the cast on guitar, flute, recorders. Where Swale innovates, getting the cast to interact with the audience, she tends to score.
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Yet this show is less beguiling on some of the basics. The plot concerns a young Bath lady, Lydia Languish, who wants to marry for (of all things!) love. Mrs Malaprop wants her to marry for money, and arranges with Sir Anthony Absolute for his son to be the man in question. Actually, Jack and Lydia have already fallen for each other — albeit she thinks he’s a penniless romantic type called Ensign Beverly.
Confused? Well, you should be a bit. But surely not as much as I was here. Too much of the first half’s dialogue comes at the same pace, in the same tone, so that soon the exposition turns the ears to rubber.
Cast and audience alike need more pointers. As Jack, Harry Hadden-Paton has an engagingly raffish ease about him. But he’s almost too easy, so we don’t know what really matters to him.
So, to judge by the final preview anyway, Swale and co need more time to get under the story’s bonnet. To figure out what matters and what doesn’t. The wide stage and gangway dividing up the raked seating don’t make it easy to impose a mood either.
But there are some good performances. Imrie is a contained but convincing Malaprop. Succumbing to haughty heartbreak at the end, she gives us a world of information in a change of expression before finally giving it to us straight: “Men are all barbarians.” Robin Soans is a brilliantly bullish Sir Anthony, while Ella Smith impresses as Julia, as mucked-around in love as all the woman are here.
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So I admired this plucky production in parts. But could I care about any of it? Reader, alas, I could not.
Box office: 020-7407 0234, to Jan 30