The importance of being fun

Noel Coward Theatre

⭑⭑⭑⭑

Stephen Fry in The Importance of Being Earnest. Photo: Marc Brenner

I gave a lukewarm review to this production of The Importance of Being Earnest when it premiered at the National Theatre. Part of the reason was, I love this play and, even though I still enjoyed the witty dialogue and the ingenious story of identity and hidden truth, I felt the queer interpretation was laid on a bit thick. I accepted that the two main characters’ double lives could be taken as a metaphor for gay men’s secrecy in past times, but, to my mind, Max Webster‘s decision to foreground the subtext undermined the power of Wilde’s actual text. I now think my prejudice blinded me to the quality of what was in front if me

So I wanted to give it a second chance, and go in more prepared for this approach. And I wanted to compare Olly Alexander‘s Algernon and Stephen Fry’s Lady Bracknell with Ncuti Gatwa and Sharon D Clarke.

It’s not only the twostars, there’s a complete new cast. Each actor captured the distinctive cadence of Oscar Wilde’s prose, delivering lines with clarity. Putting my gratitude for that aside, I fully expected Alexander and Fry to lack the power of Gatwa‘s dazzle and Clarke’s swagger. And in a way I was right, neither has the charisma of the National’s original casting. However, their more restrained interpretations of Algie and Lady Bracknell create a more balanced production.

They make the parts their own, as judges on talent shows are apt to say. Olly Alexander delivers an exemplary performance, imbuing Algie with endearing boyish charm, while Stephen Fry relied on a quiet, clipped delivery (and to be fair his height) to exert his authority. This is not the pantomime dame I feared but rather a totally believable version of the snobbish, domineering representative of the aristocracy. Where the previous larger-then-life characterisations almost suffocated Wilde’s delicate plot construction, toning them down seems to allow it to breathe a little more.

The rest of the West End cast are as good if not better than their National Theatre counterparts. Outstanding are the two young women, Gwendolen and Cecily, played by Kitty Hawthorne and Jessica Whitehurst respectively, and the object of Jack and Algie’s affections. I still found their overt expressions of sexual frustration somewhat incongruous with the period context, but I went with it, and actually the tongue waggling and the attention they pay to their fiery loins is pretty funny. Come to think of it, their obsession with their husband being called Ernest is just as silly.

Another highlight is Hayley Carmichael playing the manservants Lane and Merriman. It’s hard not to laugh at Merriman’s every entrance, when this diminutive figure dressed in oversized wig and tailcoat moves with mechanical stiffness and an air of complete bewilderment.

Shobna Gulati and Hugh Dennis extract plenty of humour from the relationship between Miss Prism and Canon Chasuble. Their suppressed passions form a delightful counterpoint to the younger lovers’ unbridled emotions. Nathan Stewart-Jarrett is a fine, likeable Jack Worthing.

Olly Alexander and Hayley Carmichael in The Importance of Being Earnest. Photo: Marc Brenner

Far from going further in laying on thick this gay interpretation, the transferred production seems to have reined it in ever so slightly. I admit I was expecting, and therefore was less concerned about the opening where Algie is in a cocktail dress at a cross dressing party, or the men and women being sexually excited by their own as much as the opposite sex, or by the references to modern pop songs.

It may have avoided becoming the pantomime I feared but the production is still deliciously over the top. Rae Smith’s colourful costumes and lavish sets, complete with masses of blooming bushes and two naked male statues, create an exuberant atmosphere. And the curtain call does provide a panto-style walkdown, with the cast dressed in giant petals.

I would still prefer a version of The Importance of Being Earnest that allows the lines to speak for themselves, but I am very happy to concede that Wilde’s timeless comedy is big enough to take a joke, and this is a particularly good joke.

The Importance of Being Earnest can be seen at the Noel Coward Theatre until 10 January 2026. Buy tickets direct from the theatre

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★★★

Production photo of The Importance Of Being Earnest from Classic Spring Theatre — The Importance Of Being Earnest

I don’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth because it is great to have the opportunity to see all four of Oscar Wilde’s classic comedies in stage productions. Unfortunately, good as they are, these Classic Spring Theatre Company versions really don’t work that well on film, hence my three star rating.

I think it’s a lot to do with the difference between theatre and film. For a start, in a large auditorium like London’s Vaudeville Theatre, stage actors need to speak slowly and loudly to be understood at the back of the upper circle. To be fair, when we watch a large scale play on film, our brains usually allow for the slightly melodramatic way actors deliver speeches on stage. However, Oscar Wilde’s fast-moving, sharp-witted dialogue is really sabotaged by this approach. The strong element of melodrama in these plays becomes very obvious.

You also realise just how much of the content of most stage plays is verbal. When we’re watching a drama made for the cinema or TV, we’re used to lots of changes of scene, fast editing, and action. On stage, let’s be honest, in most plays most of the time, they stand around and talk. In the first halves of all of the first three plays, partly because of the pace, I was thinking ‘My goodness, they talk a lot’. This wouldn’t even occur to you if you were there in the theatre, hanging on every word. At least at home, you can press pause and make a cup of tea. Whatever you do, don’t pour a glass of alcohol!

Thank goodness they pick up the pace after the interval. By the way, each interval is spoiled by a silly music hall song, inappropriate to mood of high society that’s being portrayed.

The third acts follow the interval, and in the first three they are invariably the best, as all the plot setups of the first half come to an explosive fruition, the fourth act being how it all works out. These third acts are full of surprises and Wilde’s trademark epigrammatic wit.

Just to remind you, if you want to watch them in chronological order, the plays start with Lady Windermere’s Fan in which a woman thinks her husband is having a secret affair whereas, in fact, he’s hiding a very different secret. In A Woman Of No Importance, a single mother battles with the secret father to prevent her son falling under his influence. Then comes An Ideal Husband in which a secret mistake made early on his career threatens to derail a successful politician but more importantly ruin his marriage to his holier-than-thou wife. Finally, there’s Wilde’s masterpiece The Importance of Being Earnest in which the two main male characters maintain secret lives causing much confusion, as well as upsetting a certain Lady Bracknell.

So they all concern secrets, which we now see as being very significant given what we know about Oscar Wilde’s own secret life. It’s hard not see some personal feeling in epigrams like ‘scandal is gossip made tedious by morality’ or ‘Sooner or later we have all to pay for what we do’.

The first three play owe a debt to Ibsen even as Wilde blends in his legendary wit. So there’s quite a bit of serious talk about love and real goodness in a hypocritical society. ‘All lives, save loveless lives, true Love should pardon,’ says one character.

The exception is The Importance of Being Earnest in which Wilde goes all out for comedy from the first line and never stops, even if there is an underlying satire of society’s hypocrisy.

The productions are well acted and the naturalistic, late Victorian settings are spot on. I particularly liked the lightness of Paul Wills’ designs for Lady Windermere’s Fan.

Production photo of Eve Best in Classic Spring Theatre's A Woman Of No Importance — Eve Best in A Woman Of No Importance

In the first three plays, women play major parts and the actors in these productions make the most of their meaty roles. Eve Best is particularly impressive in A Woman of No Importance. Her breathless shock as she reacts to a momentous decision that she makes at the end of the play is heart-grabbing.

You probably want to know about Lady Bracknell. Well, Sophie Thompson plays the part well, enunciating every vowel and consonant as if she wants to control each word she speaks, as well as controlling everything else. There are prototype Lady Bracknells in the earlier plays- typically snobbish matriarchs. Jennifer Saunders is excellent in Lady Windermere’s Fan, Susan Hampshire great in An Ideal Husband but the best is Anne Reid’s employment of a tiger smile as Lady Hunstanton in A Woman Of No Importance.

It’s difficult to make a proper judgement on the quality of the stage productions but the best is An Ideal Husband but then the material is very good. The director Jonathan Church (each production has a different director) has a lightness of touch. And there’s a stellar cast which includes Nathaniel Parker, Frances Barber, Edward Fox and the excellent Freddie Fox, all languid limbs and ironic smiles, as the louche Lord Goring who is, to quote a different Wilde play, ‘pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time’.

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