ABSTRACT
The Chances has received two modern productions, by Allan Wade for the Phoenix Society in 1922 and Laurence Olivier at Chichester Festival Theatre in 1962. Both directors, however, chose Buckingham’s Restoration adaptation of the play, with its wholesale reworking of Acts 4 and 5, over Fletcher’s original. This chapter examines the critical receptions of both productions, considers the moral unease they aroused in response to the play’s bawdy nature and goes on to argue, against 300 years of critical and theatrical tradition, that Acts 4 and 5 of Fletcher’s original possess an energetic theatricality that has been persistently overlooked.
