No rival for 'The Rivals'

By L. Darrall

Restoration comedies can be loquacious at the best of times and Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The Rivals, is one of the guiltiest culprits; with a large proportion of its humour centred around the misuse of language or ‘malapropisms’ of the infamous Mrs Malaprop, it is essential that the oratorical foundations of the play are unshakeable. And boy, were they!

We entered the Arcola to be greeted by actors in a pre-show state, chatting to the audience, setting up props and generally making us feel welcome in the space. This clever convention, contrived by director Selina Cadell, instantly made the actors feel accessible to us, the audience, and was a natural precursor to the style of address to come.

To say that the company of actors were a tour de force would be an understatement; they attacked the lengthy, verbose, garrulous, vociferous, effusive (you get the picture) dialogue with vigour, spitting every consonant and luxuriating every vowel. They performed a large proportion of the text in direct address, going above and beyond the instructed asides and generously sharing Sheridan’s trickier hyperbolic syllables with our open eyes and ears.

This was not a restoration comedy that endangered the viewer of a soporific experience. This had pace, raucous humour and sweat. You could see the actors working, and we were let in on their journey, be it through asides, a wink or a tear, we saw it all. There was no place to hide in this show, for either audience or performer.

To pick out particular performances in this production seems to me to be rash and irresponsible as all were indispensable cogs in the boisterous and often pant-wettingly funny machine. The Rivals is a play that has been done and redone but, with this direction, it has found the ‘pineapple’ of performance.

Four Stars **** The Rivals Arcola Theatre October 15th- November 15th

Book HERE

@PostScriptJour

#reviews