Joe Kline / The BulletinActors in ìThe School for Scandalî rehearse last week in Bend. They will perform the play at 7:30 p.m. Thursday through Sunday at Cascades Theatre.

Brian Johnson directs nearly two dozen actors in “The School for Scandal.” And he wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I like bigger casts,” Johnson said. “I like having lots of characters and lots of interaction and farcical ins and outs and mistaken identities and things like that.”

Obliging him in his directorial leanings is this comedy of manners by Richard Brinsley Sheridan, opening tonight at Cascades Theatre in Bend (see “If you go”).

Given its plotlines, the play requires a large cast.

“British comedies from the 1700s never had just one,” Johnson said.

Sheridan came up with some doozies when he named his characters in the play, a send-up of upper-crust gossips: There’s a Lady Sneerwell (played by Joanna Tyler), a Sir Benjamin Backbite (Noah Campbell-White) and, in all honesty, there’s a Mrs. Candour (Angela Lund).

Prominent among the storylines is that of Peter Teazle (Rick Jenkins).

“He is an elder gentleman, but he’s married a younger woman (Lady Teazle, Natalie Manz) and finds out after he married her that she married him for his money. She’s not paying him much attention … and their marriage is starting to fall apart,” Johnson said.

“The local circle of gossips, which is where the title comes from, pick up on this failing marriage and they make it part of their mockery and verbal abuse,” he said. “It’s a play about these two, or Sir Peter Teazle in particular, and trying to rescue his marriage and his reputation from these gossips that go around talking about it.”

There’s also a young man in town named Joseph (Ben Larson) who is simultaneously romancing Lady Teazle while trying to make himself favorable to the idea of marrying Maria (Jessi Balcom).

“He wants to marry her because she’s set to inherit a fortune,” Johnson said. “And he’s lying to everybody.”

The play is appropriate for teens, Johnson said.

“It’s one of Britain’s classics,” he said. “It’s a fun play with some good life lessons about honesty and love.”

— Reporter: 541-383-0349, djasper@bendbulletin.com