Review: The Rivals, Southwark Playhouse

Written for Time Out


Unlikely bedfellows, Beyonce Knowles and Richard Sheridan. Yet it's her booty-shaking anthem Single Ladies, neatly remixed as a Greensleeves-style romanesca, that kicks off this piquant production of his comedy of manners.

The same arch knowingness continues throughout as Sheridan's romantic competitors pile into Bath to seek the hand of Miss Lydia Languish, who - inspired by slushy novels - is intent on marrying for love alone. Her aunt, meanwhile, the linguistically-challenged Mrs Malaprop, has promised her to the eligible Captain Jack Absolute. Only, of course, he's already set her swooning under the guise of the cavalier Ensign Beverley.

Director Jessica Swale handles this contrived tangle by turning it against itself, tossing everything outwards with a cynically raised eyebrow that embraces its skittishness. Sure it keeps you giggling, but at the expense of any deeper interrogation. The outside perspective means that nothing really matters. In playing characters for laughs alone, it absolves them too readily of naivety and narcissism.

Not that the talented cast seem to mind too much. Harry Hatton-Powell is the perfect balance of swagger, charm and smarm as Captain Absolute. As Mrs Malaprop, Celia Imrie is brilliantly dim - she glides over the bungled vocabulary, smartly leaving its selling to others - but never justifies the label of "she-dragon". Though a touch under-sentimental, Charity Wakefield is suitably dainty and there's superb comic support from Christopher Logan and Robin Soans.

It's all great fun, but ultimately Red Handed's production proves its own worst enemy: it's so light and breezy that it blows itself away.