Past and present collide in Deborah Warner’s over-lively production of Sheridan’s 1777 comic satire of gossip and scandal. Human nature hasn’t changed much in the intervening centuries – moneyed old men still marry much younger wives, rumours of clandestine assignations still run rife, and upper-class bachelors continue to roister away family fortunes.
So although the cast adopts predominantly period costume after putting on a strutting, present day fashion show, the 18th century ladies sport designer handbags and a mobile phone makes a telling appearance. Some of these anachronistic conceits work - as, for example, when the seemingly moral Joseph Surface projects pornographic stills onto the folding screen. Moments later, he uses it to conceal Katherine Parkinson’s Lady Teazle and her Vivienne Westwood carrier bags. But the styles do not always blend, with a comparatively unadorned set and Brechtian captions at odds with the (admittedly very watchable) excesses of Leo Bill’s agitated, intoxicated libertine Charles Surface who, to his credit, turns out to have a sentimental side.
In an evening of excess, it’s left to the older actors – Alan Howard’s walking-stick wielding Sir Peter Teazle (who, touchingly, eventually discovers that his decades younger spouse does indeed care for him as well as for his wealth) and John Shrapnel’s Sir Oliver Surface (going undercover to decide which of his nephews deserves to inherit) – to remind us of the more subtle aspects of Sheridan’s comedy of manners.
Barbican, Silk Street, EC2Y 8DS (020 7638 8891) Tube: Barbican barbican.org.uk Until June 18 (£16.00 - £50.00)
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