Jack Absolute is the comically duplicitous, arch mischief-maker in Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The Rivals which trades, typically, in love, farce, false identities and plenty of 18th-century social satire.
Writers Richard Bean and Oliver Chris have taken Sheridan’s comedy of manners as their inspiration and mashed it up with warm, nostalgic, Oh-So-British wartime humour. Directed by Emily Burns, the play takes place at Malaprop Mansions, temporarily housing a second world war RAF office, whose personnel include Jack (Laurie Davidson) and the woman of his dreams, Lydia Languish (Natalie Simpson), also a pilot.
