THE BASSET TABLE

BRISTOL OLD VIC

When Susanna Centlivre declared that her play was "designed to correct and rectify manners and to ridicule and correct one of the most reigning vices of the age" she must have had her 18th century tongue firmly in her rouged cheek. For The Basset Table is filled with characters who revel in their gambling, and their story is one in which deceit, not love, conquers all.

At the same time, the play has a proto-feminist theme which must have disconcerted its contemporary spectators, whilst making it all the more appealing to today's audiences. Unlike so many plays of the period, this is a world where women are strong and indulge in their diversions - be it gambling or natural history - with a relish which verges on the sensual. Meanwhile, the men are weak ninnies, whining and writhing in coils in a desperate attempt to win the hands of these independent-minded women.

Being a Restoration comedy, the plot is somewhat intricate, so pay attention. Lady Reveller (Harriet Thorpe) is a jolly widow devoted to gambling and the single life, and is loved by Lord Worthy (Charles Daish) in a drippy Young Conservative kind of way. Her cousin Valeria is besotted with dissection and dreams of Ensign Lovely (Jake Broder) - a pretty boy of poor prospects. Yet she is promised to hilarious 'shiver me timbers' old sea-dog Captain Firebrand (Mike Hayley). It is up to Sir James Courtly (Tom McGovern), a lover of gambling and preternaturally slick in matters of the heart, to resolve all the little love-knots, and find time to match himself up with Lady Lucy (Sara Powell) - a moralistic prig who disapproves of everything he stands for - into the bargain.

It is here that we seem to get off message as far as '"correcting and rectifying manners" is concerned. For it is not the sudden bolt of virtue and discovery of love that brings about the happy endings - it is chicanery and mendacity. Lady Reveller gives up her gambling and her heart not through conversion, but through deception. The mad scientist Valeria - a delightfully ditzy performance - ends up married to the right man only thanks to the vigorous use of disguise and subterfuge. And Sir James, the man behind all these fiendish plots, can only meet his lover's demand that he give up gambling by removing temptation from himself in a remarkable display of auto-Machiavellianism. Men are weak, says the play, and can achieve their ends only through the type of underhand trickery and duplicity usually labelled 'feminine wiles'.

Perhaps inspired by the girlpower flavour to the play and a writing style with a strong contemporary feel, director Polly Irvine has resolutely avoided staging the play in a 'period' manner. Instead, she presents comedy from the 18th century using the comic conventions of the late 20th. This is Restoration Comedy for the Fast Show generation. She is aided in this by a skilled cast which brings together a varied repertoire of contemporary comic acting, from the TV sitcom experiences of Harriet Thorpe and Robert McKewley in The Brittas Empire and Desmond's respectively, through Jake Broder's membership of the Reduced Shakespeare Company, to Mike Hayley's ten years on the comedy circuit. Even Atlanta Duffy's sketchy set - with a highly inventive, if underutilised, use of mirrors to show offstage action - is reminiscent of a Channel 4 short animation, whilst the costumes are a post-modern take on Restoration dress which is probably finding its way onto the Milan catwalks e'en as we speak. At the same time, John O'Hara's music blends harpsichord and sequencer in a rave culture quadrille which shapes the whole feel of the show.

Wild Iris's production of The Basset Table shows that present-day comedy conventions can be applied very successfully to period plays. More importantly, contemporary audiences accustomed to the blip-zap comedy of the Simpsons or Blackadder will find this production both accessible and very, very funny.

TOBY O'CONNOR MORSE