New Vic, Newcastle-under-Lyme
The old way is often the best. This summer, the New Vic is returning to first principles with a proper rep company appearing in a rotating season of plays. Director Theresa Heskins calls it "going back to the future", or, in the inimitable words of Mrs Malaprop: "We shall not anticipate the past, but our retrospection will be all towards the future."
The great joy of rep is seeing how the actors gel; though in this case, one is struck by the amount of gel the actors use. Designer Michael Holt has chosen to update Sheridan's Georgian comedy – not by much, but enough to push the action forward to the early 1800s, when wigs had fallen out of fashion and bizarre, bed-head styles had taken over in a way that wouldn't seem out of place on The X Factor.
Heskins makes the point that spa towns were the 18th-century equivalent of Ibiza, and the performances develop on the devil-may-care understanding that what happens in Bath stays in Bath. Joanna Higson's Lydia is no fey, bookish type but a strong-minded girl with a broad Lancastrian accent who keeps licentious novels concealed in her volume of sermons. As her would-be wooer Jack Absolute, Oliver J Hembrough impressively keeps track of the multiple identities that ultimately require him to challenge himself to a duel: surely the literal definition of shooting oneself in the foot.
If there's a slightly first-day-of-term feel to the production, it's mitigated by the fact that these actors have until the end of the summer to really get to know each other. There's little doubt that Heskins's new ensemble looks a class act.