September 20 - 25th - The School for Scandal by Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Northern Broadsides Company at Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough by Patrick Henry

The scandal school of the title locates itself in tea-parties gathering mostly at the home of Lady Sneerwell, who has a voracious addiction to gossip amid the Darjeeling and cream cakes passed around her close acquaintances equally hooked on rumour-peddling. Suspectedly, no-one has any friends in this circle or in upper-class society at all - only fellow-conspirators, rivals in amour or fashion or business, betes-noires, and distrusted relatives and spouses. The school operates like a kind of game of bridge, using people's crumpled-edged reputations as playing-cards: the ace, the knave, the trump-card, the two of hearts, the nine of diamonds, the four of clubs: ciphers of love, wealth and assault, all whirling into the pot.

Its members also number Mrs Candour, Mr Crabtree and his nephew Sir Benjamin Backbite, names indicating inclinations, who spin a manufacture of fictitious situations which might influence actual events, as if the composition of the play itself through improvisation and rehearsal phases.

Unknown to the others, Lady Sneerwell also spreads invented gossip through journalistic outlets by employing the insidious agent, Mr Snake. In the past she had been herself victim of slanderous rumour and so now is driven by wholesale revenge. Victims or suspects set up by The School include Sir Peter Teazle, whose low-class, rustic, much younger wife causes him anguish by her spendthrift and infidelity inclinations. Claiming his union with her has elevated her culturally, he says 'when you married me you had no taste at all.' A line as good as many in the play.

Sir Oliver Surface returns from years abroad and disguises his identity to test which of his two nephews is the most noble and least scandalous to merit legacies from him. The process of all this entices a legion of intrigue from the Scandal School set.

Sheridan became an MP and Cabinet Minister soon after he wrote his dramas in the 1770s, his scathing wit said to dominate the Commons. Northern Broadside's habit of staging classic drama such as this in robust Northern accents and characterisations, brings vital relevance to our present era, peppered with roughly-spoken, powerful, controversial figures (Prescott, Blunkett). Interspersed with more wily, smoothy types who hold Northern constituencies (Blair, Mandelson, Hague). In our PR and media-saturated times the tail wags the dog to an extent.

Public affairs whether carnal, fiscal or political, are not merely reported, but considerably prompted by the exciting ozone of innuendo and scandal. Time ago offences in sex, finance or statesmanship threatened or actually spelled disaster for such as Lloyd George, Dalton, Eden, Maudling, Thorpe. But nowadays figures can spring back quickly: Mandelson and Blunkett. Also, Clinton and Major are admired not only for past statesmanship but also sly affairs, giving them the human face of lust or greed.

In a dumbed-down, pop-up, soap-drama world now bored with political theory, there has been a leap over the stern, earnest, reformist Victorian, Churchillian and Old Labour eras. Now the cynical sophistication and mischievous intrigue of Sheridan becomes again the realpolitick mode. Brilliant in costumes and gesture and live music accompaniment, this production is inevitably at its height in the scandal school sessions themselves. Scenes of business transaction and manipulation, essential to this complex story, tend slightly to plod and ponder by comparison and could be speeded up a bit.

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