The School for Scandal – Darlington Hippodrome

Writer: R.B Sheridan

Director: Seán Aydon

Perhaps the modern audience is already too well-schooled in scandal for R.B Sheridan’s 1777 comedy to shock. Seán Aydon’s production of this witty script about adultery and gossip takes, ironically, very few risks, and likely won’t be the talk of the town.

Sir Peter Teazle (Joseph Marcell) is rich, newly married to a beautiful young woman, and has an impeccable reputation. Naturally, he’s miserable. He suspects Lady Teazle (Lydea Perkins) of sleeping with someone else – and, once a chain of gossip passes that rumour back to Lady Teazle, she figures she might as well.

The play almost, but never quite, ages well. Opening with the “I’d be happier if my wife were dead” jokes from Sir Teazle starts the play off on the wrong foot, prompting uneasy laughs at best, and discomfort for the most part. The character of Lady Teazle, and her complete candour with her elderly rich husband about exactly why she married him (hint: it wasn’t love), is a welcome contrast, however. She’s witty, complicated, and manages to be a stereotype obsessed with clothes and gossip while also being a refreshingly independent figure. Perkins plays her with a deft fluctuation between feigned shallowness and biting sarcasm. The decision to cast Perkins as both Teazle and the aged gossip Mrs Candour works on more levels than just the practical, highlighting the common truth-telling tendency the pair share.

Other elements of the play drag behind the weight of their source material; the middle of the play’s subplot about Charles (Garmon Rhys), a carefree young man, selling off the family heirlooms, doesn’t quite carry as much scandal as it might have done when first performed. As a result, the play feels bloated, and each of the run-on 18th-century witticisms, full of entendre and insinuation, becomes a chore to follow along with. It culminates in an entertaining farce, with multiple people hidden behind screens and closets while Joseph (Alex Phelps) bumbles around trying to keep them all from hearing the various secrets he’s keeping. This final section does pay off a lot of the build-up, pushing all the different strands of the play together, and even enters a kind of surrealist territory as all the characters freeze unnaturally – a bizarre but effective choice, and a highlight of the show.

That being said, the rest of the play could do with a lot more movement. Most of the lines are delivered by characters standing completely still, with very little variation in tone of voice, and far less visual jokes than a revival of an old farce demands. The actors all do their best with what they are given – Emily-Jane McNeill is a delightfully despicable Lady Sneerwell, Garmon Rhys is boldly over-the-top as Backbite (which results in some of the most hilarious moments of the play, as well as some of the more grating), and Ayesha Griffiths is compellingly assertive as Maria.

Joseph Marcell’s charismatic, warm performance of Sir Peter Teazle helps the play enormously. His mischievous laughter and chemistry with Perkins sell the character as a flawed, but likeable, old man.

The silky set design by Sarah Beaton, and the characterful costumes, grant the play an engaging visual quality that unfortunately does not quite extend to the staging itself, and the centrality of the telephones are a nice touch, adding to the sense that the gossiping chatter of the outside world is always in the room as the story takes place.

Sheridan’s School For Scandal, like the gossip it portrays, lacks the real substance that makes a story worth telling. There’s a sense that something vital is missing from the original that has been lost in the re-telling, and although it is at times entertaining, perhaps some things are best left in the past.

Runs until 8th June 2024