I was puzzled by the critical ecstasies that greeted Lindsay Posner's revival of Sheridan's delightful comedy in Stratford this spring. It struck me then, as it does on its Barbican transfer, as a good, decent, middle-of-the-road revival of the kind that a company such as Prospect used to take around the country. Not a patch, however, on the National's 1983 production where Bath, with its crescents, parades and abbeys, became not just the play's setting but also its protagonist.
Ashley Martin-Davis opts for a similiar design idea in that tiny, detachable Georgian houses are trundled about the stage to create the illusion of Bath. But the effect is more Toytown than spa-town and rarely does Posner's production set the play's romantic misunderstandings against a defined social context, as Peter Wood's did. Seeing Sir Anthony Absolute tetchily at breakfast or his son, Jack, in his clothes-laden lodgings was to learn how situation reveals character; here the action, mostly taking place in front of a pinewood proscenium arch, rarely suggests the hectic gossip-ridden bustle of Sheridan's Bath.
The compensation is that the focus is on the actors - and many of the performances are very good. Best of all is Wendy Craig's Mrs Malaprop, who, far from being the usual affected grotesque, is a real woman hungry for love and desperately proud of her verbal expertise; it is just her misfortune that she mangles almost every word she speaks.
Given the profusion of Sheridan's examples, it does seem gratuitous to tinker with lines such as "my affluence over my niece is very small": here we get, for the sake of a dirty laugh, "effluence". But Craig, who started in John Osborne plays at the Royal Court, reminds us what an excellent actress she is.
To watch the light slowly dawning as she realises that it is the dashing Captain Absolute who has secretly referred to her as "a weatherbeaten old she-dragon" is to see a woman's self-esteem crumbling into dust.
Benjamin Whitrow and David Tennant score as the Absolutes, père et fils. If the former is all buoyant, stick-waggling lechery, the latter suggests he has inherited his father's capricious temper. And Robert Portal transforms Bob Acres, the country squire who imagines himself in love with Emily Raymond's petulant Lydia Languish, from a rustic booby into a preening dandy who goes to fight a duel in beribboned shoes and fetching little tricorne hat.
Posner has clearly thought carefully about the characters; but, while his production offers a perfectly pleasant evening, it still looks a bit decontextualised on the big Barbican stage.
* Until April 17. Box office: 020-7638 8891.
