Restoration Comedy is a radical combination of two plays – Colley Cibber’s Love’s Last Shift and John Vanbrugh’s The Relapse. Cibber’s Love’s Last Shift was 1696’s biggest hit. Vanbrugh so despised the play that he wrote a sequel to undo everything he found inauthentic, creating The Relapse – which became the rival sensation of the season. The combination of these plays– itself an homage to the Restoration fad of sublimating existing sources – brings us smack into the middle of a thoroughly modern marriage debate: is it a legal union, or a stitching of souls?
Writer: Amy Freed
Director: Ed Iskandar
Choreographer: Will Taylor
Costumes: Loren Shaw
Set: Julia Noulin-Merat
Lights: Daniel B. Chapman
Sound: Jill BC DuBoff and Jeremy S. Bloom
Props: Rowan Doyle
Photo Credit: Aaron Zebrook