The social whirl continues...
Last night, Madam Arcati and I shimmied our way to the West End (again) - this time to the Noël Coward Theatre for the new, much-lauded Max Webster/National Theatre production of the Oscar Wilde masterpiece The Importance of Being Earnest!
This Wilde satire on society mores, manners and relationships, replete with many of the great man's finest, funniest and most-quoted lines has been subject to myriad interpretations in the 130 years since its debut, not least the memorable 1952 screen version with Dame Edith Evans as the play's pivotal character, the redoubtable Lady Bracknell. Indeed, the cream of British theatricals have queued up to play that particular imposing aristocratic dowager, including Dame Judi Dench, Dame Maggie Smith, Athene Seyler, Irene Handl, Dame Hilda Bracket (of Hinge & Bracket fame) and even David "Poirot" Suchet.
Knowing that for our production, none other than "national brainbox treasure" Sir Stephen Fry was donning the taffeta and wig to take on the role made it even more of a delicious prospect!
He was utterly perfect, of course - bringing the right balance between embodying Lady Bracknell's strict and conventional upper-class Victorian respectability with the ease in which her opinions could be swayed at the merest sniff of financial and reputational gain out of any situation, all the while spouting memorably disdainful barbs at anyone in her way. Think "The Dowager Lady Grantham", and you're not far off.
The main protagonists in this entangled tale, however, are the effete and ever-so-trivial boy-about-town Algernon Moncrieff (a rather good Olly Alexander, of Years and Years and Eurovision pop fame) and his excitable friend who goes by the name of Ernest Worthing (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, also excellent). Both men have many secrets, and both have created imaginary relatives - Algernon's is a perpetually-ailing friend called "Bunbury" - whom they use as an excuse to get away from their responsibilities and travel elsewhere on a whim (a habit that Algernon refers to as "Bunburying"). This is the stuff that all good farces are made of - and needless to say, as lie upon lie unravels it all gets hilariously frenetic...
It turns out that "Ernest" is actually John/Jack Worthing, a country squire with a respectable reputation and a wealthy heiress ward in his care to look out for. It's only in town, enjoying the high life, that he adopts the name "Ernest" - principally because his intended, Algernon's cousin (and Lady Bracknell's daughter) Gwendolen Fairfax (played with brilliantly mannered yet acidly barbed aplomb by Kitty Hawthorne) won't, it appears, consider marrying anyone of any other name.
Lady Bracknell, of course, has other ideas, and when she discovers that Ernest/John/Jack knows nothing of his parentage, having been found as a baby in a handbag in Victoria Station by a wealthy family - cue her much-quoted retort: "A HAND...BAG?!" - she forbids the engagement.
Meanwhile, in the country, that aforementioned ward Cecily Cardew (well-played as an impetuous and fiery spoiled teen by Jessica Whitehurst), has been led to believe that Jack's "troublesome brother Ernest" is the reason he has to leave for the city so often, and she has created a whole fictitious romance with this wayward spirit. Then Algernon gets it into his head that he will utilise another "visit to Bunbury" in order to pretend to be "brother Ernest", visit the Worthing abode in the country and woo Cecily.
Of course, Jack unexpectedly returns - in funereal mourning garb, having decided to "kill off" that very brother "from a chill; in Paris"; much to everyone's surprise, since he is apparently ensconced in the house. To top it all, Gwendolen arrives, and the girls play out a game of extremely polite bitchery over tea and cakes (one of the very best scenes in the play), albeit with a slightly sapphic twist.
What?! Homosexualist shenanigans? In an Oscar Wilde play? Heaven forfend! From the review by Andrzej Lukowski in TimeOut:
All four ‘lovers’ go about their relationships with the breezy silliness of a group of primary schoolers playing mummies and daddies. [Producer-director Max] Webster’s interpretation amps up Wilde’s wit by unburdening it of any need for us to believe in the romance. Indeed, the contrived plotting - Bunburying, the women only being into guys called Ernest, the whole handbag thing - makes more sense if viewed as role play by a group of people who are strangers to their own sexualities.
You don’t need to think too deeply about any of this, but my point is that Webster explicitly asks us to view Earnest as a queer text and refuses to take the romance, well, earnestly. Okay, it was always an allegory for closeted Victorian society and the social allure of heteronormativity. But this version is fun because it throws off any pretence otherwise.
Indeed it does that! From the opening - and somewhat bewildering - "introduction" to Algernon, dressed in a pink tulle frou-frou full-length evening gown, playing the piano and cavorting with amorphous and androgynous party-goers [presumably a "dream sequence"], through the Wildean repartee often played with a snigger and a wink and a nod to the audience ["Carry On up the Bunbury", perhaps?], to the utterly preposterous curtain-call [after the happy denouement of this tangled web resolves itself, with a complicated series of events involving aforementioned handbag, Cecily's chaperone/tutor Miss Prism (Shobna Gulati from Dinnerladies) and a clamber through a library of military records - and yes, they do "live happily ever after" (after a fashion)] that saw the entire cast reduced to wearing pantomime-esque sparkly flower costumes [what the fuck that was all about, I have no idea!], this was hardly the most - ahem - subtle interpretation of a dear old Oscar comedy we have ever seen.
However, it was a bloody great evening's entertainment - and we thoroughly enjoyed it!
[click any photo to embiggen]
The Importance of Being Earnest is running at the Noël Coward Theatre until 10th January 2026.
Don't miss it!
