Theatre review: The Importance of Being Earnest

Dominic Dromgoole’s Classic Spring company was set up to present late 19th and early 20th century classics in the West End proscenium arch theatres they were written for, the suggestion being that’s something of a unique opportunity. While that might have been the case with some of the more obscure plays that opened the Oscar Wilde season, the concluding part is The Importance of Being Earnest, whose last West End revival wasn’t only three years ago, but in the same theatre, the Vaudeville. At the time I said the twenty-year gap I’d left since last seeing the play was probably about right given its ubiquity and familiarity, and I hadn’t been planning to return for this version. But the combination of Michael Fentiman directing and Sophie Thompson reclaiming the role of Lady Bracknell for actual female actors was tempting, and with a quiet August week on the horizon I decided to fill a spare evening seeing if some well-worn bon mots could feel fresh.

Jack Worthing (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd) is a respectable young man in the country, but wants to have fun in town so he’s invented an alter-ego: In London he poses as his own younger brother Ernest, then returns home to tut at his fictional sibling’s scandalous behaviour.

As Ernest he’s proposed to Gwendolen Fairfax (Pippa Nixon,) but has fallen foul not only of her mother Lady Bracknell’s disapproval, but also of the fact that it turns out Gwendolen was only really attracted to his pseudonym in the first place. Meanwhile his friend Algernon (Fehinti Balogun) has secretly travelled to the country to take on the mantle of Ernest himself, and woo Jack’s ward Cecily (Fiona Button.) Inevitably everyone ends up thrown together, the two young women fighting over Ernest without realising they’re talking about two different people.

Fentiman’s production aims to blow the cobwebs off the play, and while it keeps the three-act structure (though fortunately with just one interval which comes early, after Act I) and set changes behind the curtain, it’s got a comparatively bare set design from Madeleine Girling that doesn’t hem the actors in behind too much ornate furniture or knick-knacks. Michael Bruce’s music blares out at the beginning of each act to signal the high-energy take on the dialogue that follows – Balogun and Fortune-Lloyd’s opening scene in particular is full of incredibly fast-paced exchanges that go against any reverential treatment of the lines. Sophie Thompson, having somehow been convinced to take a role famous for comic overacting, doesn’t spend too long over the notorious handbag, instead making “One moment Mr Worthing” the line that brings the house down.

Both positive and negative views of the production seem to see it as quite a radical reinvention (the text does include some lines from a lesser-known four-act version Wilde wrote,) with fans seeing it as boldly reintroducing the sexual subtext, its critics finding it bordering on pantomime. Viewed in isolation either side seems like a bit of an extreme response, and perhaps says more about the way Wilde’s drawing room comedies are usually performed – the lines as formal and restricted by reverence as the bodies are by corsets – than it does about this one.

It’s certainly a version that isn’t afraid of a bit of slapstick – particularly Algernon’s constant snacking, which has been expanded to the characters force-feeding each other when they get nervous. Stella Gonet’s Miss Prism is frazzled and distracted, but that’s an interpretation that makes sense for a woman who once confused a baby with a manuscript. And the actors play up the sexual attraction between the characters, but again that seems perfectly fair – for one thing, surely that’s the whole point of the story, and for another thing god forbid we end up with productions that rely on the audience smirking quietly to themselves because they read somewhere that “earnest” might have been Victorian slang for “gay,” rather than laughing at what’s on stage. Fentiman’s production is funny, and while the less traditional elements might be getting the attention, it’s Wilde’s punchlines that are getting the laughs, and it’s because they land freshly rather than because the audience are anticipating their favourite line before it comes. I don’t think you can say much fairer than that.

The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde is booking until the 20th of October at the Vaudeville Theatre.

Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Marc Brenner.