The cast enter vogueing. The tinkle of harpsichord is mixed with synthesiser and electric guitar. Luminous platforms rise from the ground with characters posing on them.
This relentlessly hot pink iteration of Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s 1777 comedy of manners about upper-class shallowness, deception and gossipmongering, emerges with period mashup pop video optics.
Stylised within an inch of its life to be Sheridan for gen Z, the story plays out its games of letter-writing deceptions and infidelities led by Lady Sneerwell (Siubhan Harrison) who connives for fun. With the scheming Joseph Surface (Stefan Adegbola) she plots against his brother Charles Surface (John Leader) to divest him of his uncle’s inheritance.
Alex Lowde’s costumes are a wonder, with pink buckled shoes, bright tights, feathers and enormous wigs (and that’s just the men). It is high-end Georgian garb crossed with the Palace of Versailles, crossed again with Italian haute couture. Printed letters on the back screen tells us we are in the House of Joseph Surface or House of Sneerwell but we could equally be in a camply period house of Versace. Or indeed, the house of Bridgerton. The Netflix costume drama is name-checked by the Royal Shakespeare Company in the marketing and this production shows its debt to that series.
The characters are coolly modern while looking fashionably period, and the dialogue has been changed to be coyly self-referential including mentions of Slapps, injunctions and lifetime peerages as a nod and wink to today’s scandals and establishment corruption.
That is all well and good but the production becomes beached by its concept and the social satire is not biting enough, nor particularly pointed for our age, despite the updated look.
Under the direction of Tinuke Craig, the dialogue and its intrigues feel plodding, with Lowde’s eye-catching but often empty pink set becoming overwhelming. Traits are overused: the snide, scheming Lady Sneerwell has an enormous bustle and walks sideways, the American-accented Snake (Tadeo Martinez) has a serpentine wiggle as he forges his letters (which appear writ large on the back screen). Music and a change of lighting signals when a character utters one of Sheridan’s cloud-parting thoughts. The preening and mannered bows have the flouncy quality of Molière’s characters. But it is all stiffly one note, and too knowingly arch.
The speed of comedy is not there either, the pace idle, perhaps a mirror to the characters who sit in tableaux of upper-class ennui, although ironically some of the turns in Sheridan’s plot remain hard to follow despite the slowness.
Occasionally its humour works. “This is not consensual,” says Charles as Lady Sneerwell clasps him. “Fuck off, I quit,” says a servant to Joseph and marches off, only for another stroppy servant to take her place. The second act greatly improves in its pace, gathering in atmosphere by the time Charles and Maria (Yasemin Özdemir) are married, but it is quite a slog to get there.
Some performances stand out, including Tara Tijani as Lady Teazle, the young wife of Sir Peter (Geoffrey Streatfeild), with some amusingly farcical moments of hiding behind screens and in closets. Theirs is the only relationship that you come to care about.
As a production in repertoire with The Merry Wives of Windsor (all but two of the actors here feature in that show), it looks every inch a summer scorcher but pales in comparison in its spirit.
