Catherine Ashmore
'Tis the season to be jolly. Or, if you're a small theatre and choose not to stoop to panto, time perhaps to be a little light, anyway, tickle some tastebuds. Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The Rivals (1775) is his best-known play, followed by The School for Scandal and The Critic. In his early twenties when he wrote The Rivals (and then, after its first London outing was howled down, rewrote it), Sheridan spawned a skittish, playful, self-consciously silly classic, arch and brilliant.