The School For Scandal at Nottingham's Theatre Royal: Review

It's an inspired choice. To celebrate the 150^th anniversary of the opening of the Theatre Royal director David Longford, has come up with the very first play performed there, The School for Scandal. Done with verve, flare and originality, the production is a treat.

The audience doesn't just get to experience the play. Since this is a promenade production, we're treated to what amounts to a tour of the Royal, backstage and downstairs. The scenes are set at different locations in the place, the final one being the stage itself, with the audience seated facing the splendid auditorium.

Sheridan's play is a satirical but strident critique of the outrageous immorality and gossip culture prevailing in 1770s London society, and the text positively bites. But there are some elements of farce – the freely-clad wife hiding behind a bedroom screen, the eavesdropping husband behind a door, the loaded uncle dropping in on his dissolute nephew, and so on.

It's a beautifully crafted comedy, and very funny.

Nearly all the performances are accomplished, possibly for non-artistic, practical reasons, many of the male characters being played, convincingly, by women. Joseph Surface, for instance, the scheming and lascivious brother of Charles (Madison Wales), the upstanding one, is done with tremendous aplomb by Charlie Osborne.

Mik Horvath is too young for the decent and un-corrupt, middle-aged Sir Peter Teazle but he acts his way out of the problem. The way he frequently repeats a word to give it new emphasis is subtly comic and realistic. Victoria Murphy is terrific as Lady Teazle, his frivolous and fun-loving but basically loyal new and much younger wife.

Deborah Porter-Walker is a horribly compelling Lady Sneerwell, the hostess of regular afternoon gossip-shops set up to destroy reputations. And Jane Robertson is the loyal Mistress Rowley, the most intelligent person in the play.

Three weirdly playful clowns (Mercedes Assad, Nikki Disney and Kayleigh Phillips) function in the servant parts, often all three playing one character simultaneously. They also step out of the action proper to shepherd the audience about.

The excellent Master of Ceremonies is Longford, playing Walter Montgomery, who directed the original production in 1865. Much of the material in his, to modern ears, comically pompous lines is taken straight from those spoken by Montgomery himself.

Costumes and wigs, designed and made by students and staff at Nottingham Trent University, and loosely and wackily based on the 18^th century, are fun, as is the live music.

What with the play itself, and the built-in theatre tour – plus a Buck's Fizz on the house – this isn't simply high entertainment: it's a fascinating experience. And knowing that you're helping to recreate history where it happened makes it a moving one as well.

The School for Scandal is at the Theatre Royal till Saturday, tickets: £13 (£11 concessions) from trch.co.uk