The Critic: or, a Tragedy Rehearsed is a satire by Richard Brinsley Sheridan. It was first staged at Drury Lane Theatre in 1779. It is a burlesque on stage acting and play production conventions, and Sheridan considered the first act to be his finest piece of writing. One of its major roles, Sir Fretful Plagiary, is a comment on the vanity of authors, and in particular a caricature of the dramatist Richard Cumberland who was a contemporary of Sheridan.
Based on George Villiers' The Rehearsal, it concerns misadventures that arise when an author, Mr Puff, invites Sir Fretful Plagiary and the theatre critics Dangle and Sneer to a rehearsal of his play The Spanish Armada, Sheridan's parody of the then-fashionable tragic drama.
The Shakespeare Theatre Company, Washington, DC, premiered the play in an updated version by Jeffrey Hatcher on 5 January 2016. The production pairs the play with The Real Inspector Hound by Tom Stoppard in the same performance, performing The Critic in the first half, and the Stoppard play after intermission.[3] The same double bill was produced at the Guthrie Theater, Minneapolis, Minnesota, opening on 23 February 2016.[4]
Charles Spencer of The Telegraph billed The Critic as "a gem", writing that it "offers a vivid impression of the dramatists, theatre buffs and critics".[5]Metro Weekly's Kate Wingfield said that the play is "very fun to be with", but also that "despite the luxuriously clever wit (and the cheeky bounce delivered by Jeffrey Hatcher’s adaptation), [it] is the decidedly sillier of the two ... once it settles into the call-and-answer routine of the play rehearsal, the farce largely overtakes the wit."[6] Dominic P. Papatola of St. Paul Pioneer Press described The Critic as a "piffle" that now feels dated.[7] Conversely, The Guardian's Michael Billington said that "when Mr Sneer talks of a moralising writer whose idea is 'to dramatise the penal laws', he seems to be anticipating our own move towards edifying verbatim theatre."[8]