Oscar Wilde’s masterpiece groans under the weight of killer lines, but this one in particular applies here: “In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing.” Transferring after a smash-hit run at The National Theatre, this production has the former in spades (not that anyone of any class, apparently, would know what any garden implement is) but I’d still have like a little more of the latter, too.
The play is, of course, most famous for two words concerning luggage. Last time around, the magnificent Sharon D Clarke infused the grande-st of dames, Lady Bracknell, with a uniquely wonderful Caribbean flavour and unexpected intonations. The casting coup this time is that great dame, Stephen Fry, and he channels Dame Edith Evans with a ripely bellowed “A handbag?”
Fry played Oscar Wilde in the 1997 film Wilde, and slips easily into the playwright’s deliciously barbed language and rhythms. At almost 6’5 and lavishly bedecked in lace and satin, he steams into scenes like a galleon in full sail. It’s a supremely confident, classy, comfortable performance that utterly delights and meets all our expectations. But I can’t help wishing he had challenged them a little more, too.
Director Max Webster appears to be doing that with the bold opening scene. Pop star Olly Alexander’s feckless aristo Algie lounges at a grand piano in a stunning cerise satin gown and heels before the dancing, cross-dressed cast sashay away to start the play in gender-traditional, if still fabulous, garb. It certainly all looks wonderful, a fancy fondant of technicoloured froth with eye-popping visuals by set and costume designer Rae Smith.
Wilde’s satire is a joyous romp of endlessly quotable lines and fizzing farce concealing subversive dualities. It’s ostensibly about sensible country gent Jack (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett) leading a foppishly frivolous double life in London as Ernest. Dissolute dapper pal Algie has invented a sickly friend Bunbury as a frequent excuse to shed his city persona for some rural R’n’R. He also later pretends to be called Ernest.
As audiences chortled over hidden identities and upper-class pretensions, Wilde and his set knew ‘earnest’ was code for homosexual, the entire play a play on pretence. The two leads gaily embrace the queer subtext while new Sapphic yearnings imbue their respective love interests, Algie’s cousin Gwendolen and Jack’s ward Cecily (Kitty Hawthorne and Jessica Whitehurst).
It’s all a hoot, providing easy laughs but preventing credible romance. Fair enough, George Bernard Shaw called this Wilde’s “first really heartless” work, but still something doesn’t quite connect or convince this time around..
Hawthorne and Whitehurst’s feisty lasses are a constant hoot. Both actresses juggle broad physical comedy with mastery of the material, bringing a refreshing modern energy and attitude to their theatrical posh accents and roles.
The two lads, however, both sound (and often act) like schoolboys putting on silly voices. Alexander’s Algie quivers with constant ticks, twitches, eye rolls and camp affectations. Ironically, he constantly has his tongue wedged in his cheek. Yes, Algie’s a silly dandy but the performance strays too far into parody and we need to believe just a smidgeon in the eventual heterosexual declarations of love. Stewart-Jarret brings tremendous vigour and presence, but gets a little too shouty. Neither truly convinces in their delivery of Wilde’s divine text.
It doesn’t help that everyone is utterly upstaged by theatre legend Hayley Carmichael, using every ounce of her comedic genius to deliver a drily lugubrious butler in Act One and a ludicrously side-splitting doddering, gong-bashing footman in Act Two. She received applause almost every time she was on.
In fact, it’s a tricksy choice to add so much broad physical hamming from almost every character to a play so rooted in fleetly flashing verbal wit. The modern and trad tones don’t quite blend and sometimes strain to sustain a high-octane campery that delivers giggles and belly laughs while teetering on panto and often overshadowing the text.
There’s no denying it’s often fun but it really needs some finessing.
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST AT THE NOEL COWARD THEATRE TO JANUARY 10