Bob Brown

THE manager of Covent Garden, George Colman, was sure Oliver Goldsmith’s new play would be a bust. But Goldsmith’s friend Samuel Johnson (who, to the playwright’s annoyance, called him “Goldy”) was more encouraging. As Goldsmith noted in his nearly fawning dedication to Johnson, “The undertaking of a comedy, not merely sentimental, was very dangerous; and Mr. Colman, who saw the piece in its various stages, always thought it so.”

   The “danger” was that the play, She Stoops to Conquer (1773), ran against the tide of popular taste, which preferred morally edifying works. Here, by contrast, was a comedy whose purpose was not to touch the heart but to tickle the funny bone. If the audience laughed, Goldsmith would be satisfied. And Johnson knew they would. “I know of no comedy for many years that has so much exhilarated an audience, that has answered so much the great end of comedy — making an audience merry,” Johnson is quoted by his biographer, James Boswell, as saying.

   In 1773, a “laughing comedy” was rare. Unlike the biting satires of Molière, whose Restoration plays often ran afoul of the authorities, Goldsmith’s comedy is brimming with lovable characters, even for all their foibles. They’re folks you’d enjoy sharing a brew with or joining for a cup of tea. They’re even the kinds of people you might find in your family album.

   The play’s Georgian cultural references may be lost on today’s audiences, but the hilarity remains as fresh as ever in the characters and situations. The engines are, as in Shakespeare, mistaken identities, mismatched pairs, outsized appetites, and class differences.

   You’ve also got country versus city culture. At their rural estate, the Hardcastles are a bag of mixed nuts. Mr. Hardcastle (Paxton Whitehead), a retired military man, is the lord of his manor, which in David Korin’s astonishing set design resembles a castle interior: Crossed swords hang over a vast stone mantelpiece, hunting-motif tapestries adorn the walls, which extend up to high, timbered ceilings. (For scene shifts, the sets change in a twinkling from manor to alehouse to woods, as required.) Old Hardcastle aims to marry off his daughter, Kate (Jessica Stone), to young Charles Marlow (Jon Patrick Walker), the son of an old friend.

   Mrs. Hardcastle (Kristine Nielsen) is a would-be fashionista. “There’s nothing in the world I love to talk of so much as London, and the fashions, though I was never there myself,” she admits. Her outlandish hairdo, copied from an old sample book, looks as if her head got stuck in a cotton-candy machine. She wears billowing dresses with blimp-like side-hoops that trip her up. Her clothes are in wild, colorful ginghams and checks — cut to period style but of modern patterns. (Costume designer Gabriel Berry has made the attire its own punch line.) Her most ardent hope is that her lump of a son, Tony Lumpkin (Brooks Ashmanskas), will marry his cousin, Constance (Rebecca Brooksher).

   Of course, the two loathe each other (Tony lusts after a certain “Bouncing Betty”), and the girl has set her cap for George Hastings (Jeremy Webb), a pal of Charles. When the two young men ride into the village on their way to the country manor, they are headed off by Tony, who deludes them into thinking the Hardcastle place is a rustic inn. Then the fun begins.

   Charles has a split personality: Reserved in good company and apoplectic in the presence of fine ladies like Kate, he becomes a rakish self-styled “Rattle” toward wenches. Mr. and Mrs. Hardcastle are in fits dealing with their impertinent young guests, who demand to see the bill of fare and allow their servants the run of the liquor. While Constance tries to outmaneuver her aunt and elope with George, Kate slyly deceives Charles, stooping to conquer him as the “innkeeper’s” rough-edged barmaid.

   As directed at a brisk pace by Nicholas Martin, the entire cast has great fun with these broadly limned characters. Goldsmith’s strength is not so much in the language as in the situations he sets up — although there are certainly funny lines in the play. When Mrs. Hardcastle urges her hard-partying Tony not to join his friends for an evening of drinking, she says, “Pray, my dear, disappoint them for one night at least.” To which he replies, “As for disappointing them, I should not so much mind; but I can’t abide to disappoint myself.” Especially hilarious is Nielsen, whose sidesplitting physical performance earns its own round of applause.

   There’s no farce like a classic English farce. In his day, Goldsmith may have taken a chance by playing for laughs. But he hit the mark, and he keeps hitting it over two centuries later. This comedy is a sheer delight.

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  She Stoops to Conquer continues through October at the Matthews Theatre in the McCarter Theatre, 91 University Place, Princeton, through Nov. 1. Performances:Wed.-Sun. 7:30 p.m., Fri. 8 p.m., Sat. 3, 8 p.m., Sun. 2 p.m. Tickets cost $25-$60; 609-497-0369; www.mccarter.org