Hamlet staged in Elsinore would be something to see, but The Rivals in Bath comes a pretty close second, particularly as the Theatre Royal is celebrating its 200th anniversary with a revival of Sheridan's tale of love and intrigue. The hustle and bustle of the fashionable city where servants and masters live cheek by jowl, and everyone knows everyone else's business, is beautifully evoked in Christopher Morahan's production. It is an enjoyable one, but a little too cosy.
For a play about love, Sheridan's comedy is particularly heartless. Morahan's production gives all the characters the benefit of the doubt, even the poisonous Sir Lucius O'Trigger who mistakenly believes he is conducting a romance by letter with the 17-year-old heiress, Lydia Languish, when in fact it is with her elderly aunt, Mrs Malaprop, a woman who is to the English language what the mincer is to fillet steak.
The central casting of Stephanie Cole as Mrs Malaprop and George Baker as Sir Andrew Absolute, determined to marry his son Jack to Lydia at all costs, sets the tone. These veteran actors have great comic timing, but they are always benign. She is pink and cuddly; he is bluff and cuddly. Where is the "she dragon" of Jack's letters to Lydia, where the white fury that would really make son fear father? Only Jasmine Hyde bridges the gap between the 18th and the 21st centuries as the headstrong Lydia, a young woman destined to discover, in Mrs Malaprop's immortal words, that "all men are Bulgarians".
· Until October 15. Box office: 01225 448844. Then touring.
