Vancouver East Cultural Centre
December 2015-January 2016
Directed by Johnna Wright
Set Design by David Roberts
Costume Design by Sheila White
Lighting Design by Alan Brodie
Music Composed by Bruce Ruddell
Stage Manager: Joanne P.B. Smith
Apprentice Stage Manager: Ariel Martz-Oberlander
Production Manager: Jayson McLean
CAST:
Scott Bellis, Duncan Fraser, Martin Happer, Luisa Jojic, Gabrielle Rose, Emma Slipp, Kirk Smith, John Emmet Tracy, Jenny Wasko-Paterson
Jessie Richardson Awards:
Gabrielle Rose, Outstanding Supporting Performance
Sheila White, Outstanding Costume Design
Photos by Tim Matheson
Sheridan’s The Rivals is a daring and irreverent comic masterpiece by a young playwright – and theatrical survivor – who burst on to 18th-century Britain’s theatre scene at the age of 23. Sheridan wrote a review (yes, he reviewed his own play), claiming that The Rivals would “stand foremost in the list of modern comedies.” He was trying to fill the houses, but he may have been more right than he realized. One of his characters even made it into the English dictionary: the word malapropism (“a word sounding somewhat like the one intended but ludicrously wrong in the context”) is derived from The Rivals’ Mrs. Malaprop.
With a twinkle in its eye, The Rivals attacks the ”business” of matrimony, the posturing of the aristocracy, the self-indulgence of romanticism, and the age-old ”generation gap.” It also skewers intellectual pretension: Mrs. Malaprop is the living embodiment of Alexander Pope’s warning that ”a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.”
This is an audacious, mischievous play by a true theatrical entrepreneur. Yet its premiere was panned by critics and audiences alike. Sheridan closed the show, rewrote it, and reopened 11 days later with his own glowing review to recommend it. It was a huge success. This was an artist who believed in himself, and in his work. And with good reason: it’s quite possibly the best first play ever written.
