The Rivals. Pearl Theatre Company (see Off Broadway). By Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Directed by Hal Brooks. With ensemble cast. Running time: 2hrs 35mins. One intermission.
The Rivals: In brief
The Pearl revives Richard Brinsley Sheridan's bawdy 1775 comedy, whose gifts to the world include the word malaprop (named after a deliciously error-prone character). Hal Brooks directs.
The Rivals: Theater review by Diane Snyder
Mrs. Malaprop would no doubt approve—even if she couldn’t find the right words to express why. The Rivals is receiving a perfectly respectful production from director Hal Brooks, the newly appointed artistic chief of the classics-oriented Pearl Theatre Company. His revival charms without arousing too much ardor, just the thing this lady of propriety would likely admire.
Of course, the comically word-confusing Mrs. Malaprop (Carol Schultz) is the most famous character from Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s 1775 satire of manners, in which wooing couples bring about their own woes by making love too complicated. But the high points of its present incarnation come from the opposite sex: Brad Heberlee’s mercurial mood swings as the overthinking Faulkland, Dan Daily’s outraged sputtering as proper patriarch Sir Anthony Absolute and Chris Mixon’s buffoonery as aspirational bumpkin Bob Acres.
The comedic force of the cast, including Cary Donaldson and Jessica Love as central lovebirds Jack Absolute and Lydia Languish, carries the first act along at a spirited clip, but it’s not enough to sustain the second. By the time Mrs. Malaprop sighs, “Men are all Bavarians,” your romance with The Rivals will probably have run its course.—Theater review by Diane Snyder
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