‘Rivals’ reaches the pineapple

Not to be undone, the Dublin-born playwright withdrew the play and, over the course of just 10 days, rewrote it, eliminating a few scenes that hadn’t played well, recast a role or two, and softened the reportedly offensive “Irishness” of one character, Sir Lucius O’Trigger.
When the play reopened on Jan. 28, it was a gigantic hit, destined to take its place among the three plays for which Sheridan is remembered, “The School for Scandal,” 1777, and “The Critic,” 1779, being the others.
Sheridan wrote his classic triptych over the course of just four years, and then, in 1780, turned to politics and sat in Parliament for 32 years, finally losing his seat in 1812.
Sheridan’s family had settled in Bath in 1771, and that’s where he placed “The Rivals,” with the seaside resort informing every moment.
There is probably no more famous line in all of British comedy than “He’s the very pineapple of perfection,” spoken by a character, Mrs. Malaprop, who managed to work as many as three distinct words into the English language, “malaprop,” “malapropism,” and the perhaps less frequently heard “malapropian.”
“The Rivals” is back in town in a sparkling Lincoln Center production at the Vivian Beaumont Theater, under the direction of the dexterous Mark Lamos, with the redoubtable Dana Ivey, ever a crowd-pleaser, but this time somehow sweeter and even vastly gentler than usual as the imperishable madame of famously compromised vocabulary.
Malaprop is described in the text as a “dragon,” but that’s not at all the way Ivey plays the role, opting instead for a kind of befuddled joviality, yielding ample rewards for an audience that seemed to ingest every line as though it were a delectable Christmas cookie.
Sheridan’s plot for “The Rivals” is simplicity itself, with a young swain adopting a second identity for the purposes of pursuing a romantic courtship, an eligible young maiden trying to elude the clutches of her domineering aunt, a female cousin, equally eligible, serving as a confidante, meanwhile engaging in her own romantic entanglement. It’s tempting to think that Oscar Wilde, somewhat more than a century after Sheridan wrote “The Rivals,” looked at his fellow Dubliner’s comedy before conjuring up the double identity assumed by one of the lovers in “The Importance of Being Earnest,” who trumps up a false persona for almost identical reasons.
In Matt Letscher, who makes his Lincoln Center debut as Captain Jack Absolute, and the only briefly seen, “imaginary” surrogate, Ensign Beverly, director Lamos has come up with a real find, a sturdy young actor who seems to know instinctively how to meet the demands of Restoration comedy with grace and style, handling the sometimes tricky language flawlessly.
The whole cast of “The Rivals” deals with the language beautifully, employing conspicuous clarity, the welcome result of which is that the audience, even an otherwise slightly, sluggish matinee house, picks up on the jokes with lightning speed, making Lamos’s production more like a rocket.
In addition to the immensely skilled Ivey, the director has made wise use of stage veterans Richard Easton and Brian Murray as, respectively, Jack’s befuddled father, Sir Anthony Absolute, and that visitor from Ireland, O’Trigger.
Murray, possibly in conformation with Sheridan’s decision to mute O’Trigger’s “Irishness,” for whatever reasons may have prevailed in 1775, plays the role without much acknowledgement of Sir Lucius’s origins.
Important as the older generation is to the success of any production of “The Rivals,” the play, in a way, belongs to the younger characters. In addition to Jack Absolute, that canny would-be lover, there is, of course, Malaprop’s niece, Lydia Languish, the object of the youthful swain’s affections.
Usually played in a manner indicated by her surname, this particular Lydia, in the perky person of bright-faced Emily Bergl, perhaps taking her cue from Malaprop’s reenergized presence, comes across with unusual measures of wit and charm.
In the secondary romantic subplot, Carrie Preston is an unusually calm and resourceful Julia Melville, while Jim True-Frost, long a staple of Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theater, provides a sound and appealing Faulkland, on deck as Jack Absolute’s closest friend.
As Lydia’s crafty maid, Lucy, Keira Naughton gives a good account of herself, while her father, James Naughton is doing conspicuously fine work across town as former German chancellor Willy Brandt in Michael Frayn’s strong drama, “Democracy.”
Captain Absolute’s servant, Fag, is rendered with grace and style by James Urbaniak, while his foil, Thomas, is nicely done by veteran actor Herb Foster. Their brief scenes serve mainly to set up Sheridan’s situation and get the ball rolling, a tack they achieve admirably and swiftly.
The character of Bob Acres, described as “a country gentleman,” is performed by Jeremy Shamos as perhaps just a touch too much of a cartoon, but is, however, none the less effective.
The huge Georgian manor house designer John Lee Beatty has provided as a home for Mrs. Malaprop and Lydia fills the vast Beaumont stage, suggesting that, sooner or later, it will revolve and reveal the domicile’s interior.
That this never happens is one of the production’s few, decidedly trivial disappointments, with well-selected items of period furniture, and sometimes the play’s personae, coming and going on a moving circular runway, landing them on what, by rights, ought to be the street in front of the house.
Peter Laczorowski’s subtle, frequently modulating lighting and Jean Goldstein elaborate costumes contribute powerfully to the gleeful impact of “The Rivals.”
When Sheridan, a mere broth of a boy in Bath, was writing his play, revolution was stirring in America and in France. The playwright was concerned with fluffier stuff. There have been at least three productions of “The Rivals” in New York in the last few seasons, and seeing what Lincoln Center has done with it, it’s easy to understand the lure it holds for people who produce plays, actors most especially.