Congratulations to everyone at Lincoln Center's astonishing revival of Richard Brinsley Sheridan's classic comedy, The Rivals. And note: Recipients of this printed ovation include savvy director Mark Lamos right through to witty wig designer Charles LaPointe, whose name in small type is buried on a late Playbill page.

It was just over a year ago that Jack O'Brien's production of Henry IV opened in the same Lincoln Center venue and proved to longtime skeptics that William Shakespeare can be treated with supreme confidence this side of the Atlantic. Now LCT execs have collected a large cadre of theater artists to prove that 18th-century English comedies of manners tackled by erstwhile colon[...]