REVIEW: The Rivals, Arcola Theatre ✭✭✭✭✭

The Rivals review Arcola Theatre

Constant eruptions of anger, sexual frustration, discrimination of town against country and English against Irish, and hostilities of son against father, servant against master and mistress run as a guiding set of threads through every scene; and assorted categories of gendered vanity, both misogynist and misanthropic, provide the root of much of the humour, some of it still unsettlingly cruel and mocking