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The Importance of Being Earnest (Noël Coward Theatre, West End) - ★★★★ REVIEW
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This production is one that I found very easy to enjoy because I like my Oscar world like I like my cups of tea. A sort of a pink reddish hue and gay as hell. Oh my God. Hey, welcome back to my theatre themed YouTube channel. Or hello to you if you're listening to this review on podcast platforms. My name is Mickey Jo and I am obsessed with all things theatre. Those of you who are just listening today and not seeing the outfit that I've decided to put on for this particular review won't be getting the full benefit of this white floral jacket moment. And for the inevitable comment that comes along to say, Mickey Jo, why do you dress so ostentatiously in your reviews? Bearing in mind we're talking about an Oscar Wilde play today, to you I say, I haven't put this jacket on since Easter of this year. I found three small chocolate eggs in the pocket. Who's laughing now? Dear Evan Hansen, today is going to be a good day. And that is why, anyhow, if you are meeting me for the first time, I'm a professional theatre critic here on social media, and today we are going to be discussing the newly opened West End transfer of the National Theatre's revival production of Oscar Wilde's the Importance of Being Earnest. It has recently opened at the Noel Coward theat with a largely different cast than the one that it had last Christmas at the national, notably with Stephen Fry playing the role of Lady Bracknell and delivering that iconic utterance. Don't worry, we will get to it. In fact, we'll be discussing every aspect of this production today, including the direction, the design, the sort of inherent queer feeling of the whole thing and how that comes across, as well as the exuberant performances. As always, I'll be sharing my thoughts with you, but I would love to hear yours as well. If you have had a chance to see this production either in the West End or previously at the National Theat, or perhaps when it was screened. I think it's already been shown via National Theatre Live. Let us all know your thoughts and feelings about it in the comments section down below. Particularly if you saw that first cast, because I didn't. And if you enjoy listening to this review and want to hear more of them, make sure to subscribe to my theatre themed YouTube channel or go follow me on podcast platforms for many more coming soon. But in the meantime, let us talk about the Importance of Being Earnest. Now usually what I do is I will split these reviews into a structure of a a handful of different categories. I think inherently we are going to have to end up talking about the performances as we move through this review, because having not seen the original production of this revival back at the National Theatre, I can only assume it must have been incredibly different, because often when roles are recast it will be in a similar sort of vein with a similar sort of a type. And to go from a Sharon D. Clarke Lady Bracknell to a Stephen Fry Lady Bracknell is quite clearly a sharp enough left turn to send us careering around a country bend. Lucky not to coll sheep. And so I dare say if you only saw that first version Much of what I have to say about this production and the way that it all gels and it all works may be a little bit of a surprise to you. It may not necessarily resonate with your experience, which is why I want to hear from everyone in the comments, but for a little bit of an overview and context about the play before we carry on. This is the most famous and celebrated theatrical work of the late, great Oscar Wilde, who of course was a flamboyant gay literary icon and whose voice you can hear, I think, more clearly in this than in his novella the Picture of Dorian Gray, simply because the whole thing is filled with all of these witty musings on life, some of which offer something of an insight, but the majority of which are largely insincere. These come from Lady Bracknell. These come from her nephew Algernon. These come from a couple more of the play's characters as well. An example of the genuinely insightful might be the line the truth is rarely pure and never simple. One example of the less sincere might be to lose one parent, Mr. Worthing may be regarded as misfortune, to lose both looks like carelessness, and it's that extraordinary, refined yet playful W that has made the Importance of Being Ernest such an enduring delight. The essential plot is as follows. We meet two young men, Algernon, wealthy and something of a playboy, and his friend Ernest. Only we quickly learn that his name isn't really Ernest his name, in fact, is Jack, though he has crafted for himself something of an alternate identity. Algernon delights in this news and then confides in his friend Jack that he has some time ago invented an acquaintance who is often unwell, who he can have the excuse of visiting in order to spend time traveling around the country in getting up to devious mischief, often of a romantic nature. But on this occasion, he is awaiting a visit from his very austere and proper aunt, Lady Bracknell. She is arriving for tea with her daughter Gwendolyn, who is the object of Jack's affections. In fact, Gwendolyn also wants to marry Jack, but Lady Bracknell stands firmly in the way of this and insists on asking Jack, though she believes him to be named Ernest, a few personal questions, at which point she discovers that the circumstances of his birth and upbringing are more than a little unorthodox, given that he was abandoned as a baby and covered in a handbag, a revelation which Lady Bracknell finds so unsupportable and extraordinary that she famously repeats it back to him, utterly scandalized, and says, a handbag? That's my version of the iconic line. We'll talk about Stephen Fries in a moment. She eventually tells the orphaned young man that if he is going to continue to pursue the hand of her daughter in marriage, that he ought to acquire some relatives, and fast. At which point the action moves to his countryside home and we become acquainted with the young lady who is his ward. Her name is Cecily Cardew. At least that's how I pronounce it. They insisted on saying Sicily throughout this production, not unlike the Mediterranean island, which I did find a little baffling. In any case, Algernon arrives and attempts to seduce her under the false pretense that he is Jack's invented brother, Ernest. And so you have these two young women both believing their suitors to be named Ernest, names that they insist are highly desirable and for which there can be no alternative, when in reality, neither man, in fact knows himself to be called Ernest at all. It also gives way for a lot of mistaken identity after Jack returns to his country home, shocked to see Algernon there. Gwendolyn later arrives and encounters Cecily with neither man present, to explain away the confusion of the fact that they both believe themselves, by this point to be engaged to the gentleman whose name is Ernest Worthing, with the two instantly and needlessly becoming bitter romantic rivals. Ultimately, the return of Lady Bracknell and a handful of other supporting characters ushers us towards A tremendous clarification. But it's a comedy of wit, of charm and of diverting silliness, something the British audiences demonstrably enjoy. And it's been done on stage in the UK several different ways in the last few years alone. There is a sort of audience participatory version that has toured around and been done at fringe festivals. There has also been a version in which two actors try and tell the story by themselves as they await a late arriving cast member. There is sufficient fond familiarity with the Importance of Being Earnest among British theatrical audiences that it can be sort of reinterpreted and parodied a little, which begs the question, what exactly is this production like? Well, Max Webster, the director, has done something very interesting with this interpretation of the piece of this comedy and in very high praise. Something that I think Oscar Wilde would find utterly delightful, because though the man is enduringly a celebrated queer icon, his queerness only manifested in his work, for the most part, in latent homosexual themes. Though in the case of the Picture Of Dorian Gray, those were considered sufficient and evident enough to be used as evidence in his late 19th century prosecution. On paper, a cocktail of heterosexual romance, Max Webster has fascinatingly infused it with a queer sensibility throughout. And not just because we have a character performed in drag, which I promise we will talk about, but because the homosexual quality here is now far from latent. There are longing looks, there are flamboyant presentations, there are colourful characterizations. The whole thing feels like a collection of scarcely closeted queer individuals navigating complicated romantic feelings. And miraculously, it doesn't interfere whatsoever with the plot and with the comedy and with the necessity of these attractions and these relationships, which are sort of so extraordinary and so intense and so instant that they almost feel a little bit performative. It almost feels like a pair of two idyllic lavender marriages waiting to happen. Because it's not just the men who are acting camp on stage. It isn't only the performances of Oli Alexander as Algernon Moncrief and Nathan Stewart Jarrett as Jack Worthing that feel sort of subliminally queer. It's also the women. In fact, the women are considerably more overt, and Kitty Hawthorne as Gwendolyn Fairfax and Jessica Whitehurst as Cecily Cardew share these hysterical and frequent longing, heaving looks with seemingly little inclination from the creative team to really explore what that would actually mean for these characters or for this text. They take the attitude that it doesn't really matter or interfere, which it doesn't. Like I said, this is a comedy of wit and of silliness. And because the voice of Oscar Wilde can be heard so clearly in it, sort of works to have that sensibility running through the thing. And I wouldn't call it a queer recontextualization because that might be a production in which you would cast the roles differently and have more gender bending, perhaps, or even per the limitations of what you were allowed to do within the licensing and the rights, etc, to actually reinterpret the genders of certain characters. Now, instead of a recontextualization or a reinterpretation, this feels like a queer reduction, which makes it sound like I'm suggesting they made it less gay. And it's the opposite. I mean, a reduction in the sense of cooking the notion of taking this play and its plot and its characters and pouring gayness all over the thing and then boiling it and allowing it to sort of evaporate off, leaving an infusion of queer character in every single facet of it. But with that quality baked into these characters rather than a source that they are swimming in and dripping in, obviously and literally. You could also, I think, consider it an Importance of Being Earnest in which it seems that this quartet of young lovers are about to simultaneously discover five minutes after the action of the play, that they are in fact all gay for each other, close familial proximity notwithstanding. Listen, it was a different time. It was like gay. No cousins. Fine. But all of that being said, let us continue by talking about the performances and of course, Stephen Fry as Lady.
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Bracknell. Now I am just desperately fascinated by how significantly different Sharon D. Clarke as Lady Bracknel panel must have been in comparison with Stephen Fry. And in many ways I wish I had seen that production, because knowing the power and command that she conjures on stage and the presence and the force that she has, I've been lucky enough to see Sharon D. Clark in a couple of other stage roles. I can only imagine hers would have been a very different Lady Bracknell. Than those which we have seen before. But to have a Stephen Fry type as Lady Bracknell is, at this point so traditional it borders on cliche, because he isn't the first man to do it. David Suchet, I think, toured playing Lady Bracknell in another production of the Importance of Being Earnest, possibly the same production which was seen on Broadway with Brian Bedford in the role, the late Brian Bedford. Also that version that I told you about that originated at the Barn Theatre in Cirencester, with two actors dividing the role of Lady Bracknell between them, arguing over which of them can deliver the iconic line better and with more oomph and gravitas. And so, given all of that, I was a little dubious as to how much I was going to enjoy this performance. But there is something about Lady Bracknell and this is why it keeps being done. This works to have especially a gay man playing this role in drag. And it's not a drag with a capital D. It's not deliberately flamboyant or playing up any kind of femininity. It is closer tonally to just a very sincere sort of Agatha Trunchbull kind of performance, but less than that and with more softness and with more sincerity, perhaps akin to Hester Leggett in Operation Mincemeat and the way that Jack Malone originally built that characterization and performance. The costuming, designed as is the gorgeous set by Rae Smith, is to a certain extent flamboyant and grand, but only as much as all of the other characters. The makeup and the hair and the styling isn't over the top or in any way grotesque. It is simply indicative of femininity. And Stephen Fry's performance is very much in keeping with that. Stephen's Lady Bracknell is at every turn elegant, but equally insistent and impatient. Very proximal to Lady Catherine de Bourgh from Pride and Prejudice. This Bracknell is intimidating and comm. Commanding, but without booming or boldness. There is something to be said for Stephen Fry's stature and height in a Heeled Shoe, as well as Lady Bracknell really towering over the younger men on stage. But an atmosphere of nervousness and subservience is very much instilled among those characters when Lady Bracknell finally does arrive. And there is significant anticipation of this. And it's a casting move that really works for West End and British audiences. Right? Because everything that we associate with Stephen Fry and the high w, well read quality is also, generally speaking, what we associate with Oscar Wilde. And he is a great carrier of that torch. It's also delightfully on brand and tells audiences much of what to expect about the tone of this particular production and suggests at the queer quality immediately before they even arrive. And while we could have a very valid conversation about the scarcity of great roles in theatre for older women and those being taken away and given to men performing in drag, a big part of me also feels as though there's something very nice about the reality that within Oscar Wilde's lifetime, casting like this, done knowingly and done in a sort of tongue in cheek way, wouldn't have been possible. And like I said, I think it's something that he would very much have enjoyed. Not that it ever really needed it, but it's a sort of a reclaiming of the queer characteristics of the Importance of Being Earnest. And the power balance between performers also immediately situates Lady Bracknell to be the most commanding force on stage, because the audience is anticipating the arrival of Stephen Fry, just as they always anticipate the arrival of Lady Bracknell. And the one iconic line that they know is coming that this production pokes fun at by having a handbag floating in front of the curtains, in front of the proscenium at the very beginning, as the show is waiting to start. The line eventually arrives with surprisingly few fireworks. The line is not excessively milked by Stephen Fry. He is not amping it up like a sort of a pantomime dame. The role is played ironically in earnest, but the delivery of that line is characterized with an astonishment that gives rise to an annoyance. Simultaneously, Lady Bracknell is uneasy and perturbed by this revelation. So the subtext of the utterance, a handbag, now becomes one of shame and sort of disgust, which is very well played. Carrying on, we have many more company members to talk about, including Oli Alexander as Algernon Moncrief. This role was played in the National Theatre production originally by Anshuti Gatwa. And again, very different casting here, but Ollie is the first person revealed on stage in a glamorous, flamboyant and voluminous pink outfit, sort of familiar of Marilyn Monroe. Diamonds are a girl's best friend playing at a piano and then comically not playing at the piano, visibly miming. We later overhear Algernon practicing different piano pieces, which are clearly contempor songs that have been put into the show. But Ollie's showmanship, if you don't know he is an accomplished actor and a recording artist, as the singer from years and years serves him very, very well. Here. But it's his delivery of the material of these lines and of the character of Algernon that is so exquisite. I think he is the unparalleled star of this production. I think he's absolutely extraordinary in this role. And I've seen him on stage before. I've seen him on stage alongside British theatrical legends before at this same theatre, the Noel Coward. This was in the play Peter and Alice at must have been over a decade ago now. He was joined by Ben Whishaw and Judi Dench, Dame Judi Dench. And he was playing the representation of the character of Peter Pan in a play about the writing of Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland and the meeting between the two real people upon whom those characters were allegedly based. And he's always had that effortlessly charming, sort of a magical Shakespearean sprite kind of equality to him. But there's something so deliciously devious and utterly unashamed and unapologetic about his Algernon as he offers these insights into his way of life and the duplicitousness of it all. There are a few other actors who I think could shamelessly and under false pretenses pursue a naive young woman and do so so charmingly and so overtly camper ly as well, but grinning like the Cheshire cat if he were a twink in a gay bar smoking area. Ollie Alexander manages to seduce the entire audience enough to make this performance utterly convincing. And captiv so well suited to this material and to the delivery of all of this Oscar Wilde dialogue. He's great in this. And Nathan Stewart Jarrett is terrific alongside him. I've seen him at the National Theatre before in Angels in America. It's very nice seeing him doing something considerably lighter. And there's a real sweetness to his bumbling and hopeless but well intentioned and desperately romantic nature. If we were to read into the real queer meaning of these character interpretations. Ollie Alexander's Algernon feels more like a closeted gay man who has found means by which to survive in a period where that wouldn't be a lifestyle that he could openly live. Not unlike Oscar Wilde himself. It feels very familiar of Oscar's own personality. While Mr. Jack Worthing, calling himself Ernest, in fact living under a false name, feels more like a quietly closeted queer man who has yet to really come to terms with his own identity. And there's something interesting in the friendship between Jack and Algernon and whether there is another dimension to it as Algernon is willing him to go to dinner with him and sort of of teasing him about his young ward and his attraction to his cousin that he has a distaste for. There's a suggestion of a deepened relationship between the two of them and something else that might be going on there, and both men sort of tease at that in their performances, but not nearly as much as the two women do. And if these men seem to be navigating something of a surreptitious relationship, the women are both in real time, figuring out that that might be what they want. They are, as I mentioned before, Kitty Hawthorn as Gwendolyn Fairfax and Jessica Whitehurst as Cecily Cardew. Jessica I've seen on stage before giving a mesmerizing and intelligent performance in Cyrano. So it's very charming for her to now be playing this endless naivety, but sort of childlike insistence in this role as Cecily, she eschews the characteristics of the traditional, delightful, wistful ingenue. And instead, between her performance and the direction by Max Webster, they characterize Cecily instead as this sort of a petulant and insistent young girl. And it's all there in the material. They just dial up the stroppiness factor, as she is, despite her limited experience of the world, hugely insistent about the way in which she understands it to be and the way in which she would like to lead her life and the relationship that she has already built with the man that she has never met, her guardian's mysterious and mischievous brother, Ernest. Kitty Hawthorne, an early career actor who I haven't seen before on stage, is similarly marvelous, marvelous also bringing a real contemporary vitality to the role that she is playing. And neither wistful nor naive, but instead what I can only describe as thirsty. She is, in her every intention, visibly eager to pursue this relationship with Ernest, and she longs to connect with him just as deeply as he longs to with her. And though she cares little for her mother's perspective on whom she ought to marry and whom is worthy of her and of her station and of her class and fashionable, etc. You can still perceive in her performance and in her presentation the way in which she has been brought up. And when we move to the garden of Mr. Jack Worthing's country home, where she encounters Cecily and the two of them begin this initially subliminal but eventually effervescent verbal battle with each other, when they believe themselves to be competing for the affections of the same man, there's this repeated joke in which a really slight grassy incline can confounds her and she has to either walk down it very carefully or get on her knees and sort of crawl up it. It's like less than a foot tall and this incredibly gradual slope and it's this hysterical physical comedy send up of privilege and entitlement and wealth at the time. She's also styled. I like to think that this is intentional, but really I have no idea whether or not it is. In a way that makes her look an awful lot like Chapel Roan, which does sort of ice the lesbian cake that the two actresses are together baking. And there are some other small support roles played by notable British theatre and comedy actors. Hugh Dennis is playing the Reverend Chasuble. Shobna Jelati is playing Miss Prism. But in this production there is an unexpected standout reminding us of the real genuine definition of scene stealing. Not coming from a character with a handful of great lines always written to redirect the thrust of the moment. Not a character who is always intended to steal a spotlight, but the smallest of farcical roles, the Button Butlers. This is Hayley Carmichael playing the dual roles of two different manservants, Merriman and Lane. One of them at Algernon's residence, the other at Mr. Worthing's. And while the first is more capable and the second is considerably more exhausted, they are both scene stealingly and side splittingly funny interventions on the action. This actor has been ingeniously empowered by Max Webster to walk onto the stage once every five to seven minutes and utterly tear the audience's focus away from from whatever else has been happening and deliver hysterical physical comedy gold. And there's a long and proud tradition of us loving these sorts of characters in British comedy. I'm thinking about Blackadder, of course, also famously starring Stephen Fry. I'm also thinking about Fawlty Towers. But really the performance that this most closely reminded me of was Tom Eddins breakthrough performance in One Man, Two Governors, as the geriatric waiter that James Corden pushes down the stage stairs to do the majority of this performance, wordlessly, with the occasional exasperated line. Hayley Carmichael is a wonder in this really fantastic work. And we'll finish, I think, by singing some more of the praises of the production and of the creative team. I want to highlight many of the roles that have gone into helping to build these exceptional and witty performances, including the physical comedy advisor, Joyce Henderson, the voice and dialect coach Kate Godfrey, the intimacy coordinator Ingrid McKinnon, and the movement director, Carrie Anne Hengri, whose choreography you will know from the musical Six and The opening moments offer a little bit of movement mirrored in the finale, which is this extended joyous curtain call sequence in which the various actors return to the stage and bow in these extravagant over the top floral outfits and headdresses. It is inherently queer, it is fun. It is some kind of a fusion between the worlds of carnival and like a traditional British pantomime walk down. But it signals to the audience, I think, that they are allowed to take utter delight in this. You know, there is the concept of the British play and the traditional classic British play in which everyone would politely bow at the end and we'll all politely applaud and then we'll walk out onto the street saying how delightful and quaint and charming it was. And didn't we all have a nice diverting time and smile slightly in this we are getting raucous laughs and the two women who are meant to just be catty rivals are suddenly staring into each other's eyes as if they might kiss at any moment. This is an importance of Being Earnest that breaks a lot of the rules and does so thrillingly and unapologetically and delightfully and so extended as it might be, it's a really appropriate curtain call, I think, for this kind of a production. One that is admittedly tongue in cheek, both cheeks, in fact, Multiple tongues, multiple cheeks. Oh, I don't even know what I mean by that. And the praise for all of this has to go to Max Webster who has created something fun and frothy and pink and gorgeous. And we mentioned Rae Smith's designs, but I don't think we said enough because the costumes were all completely stunning. Honestly, I'd wear half of these clothes. And in both the set and the costume design it felt very in keeping with the overall tone of the production, which is to retain and uplift the classic sensibility while also offering, offering a contemporary perspective and a little bit of humor. It's a little campy, it's a little queer. And you could see that in the costuming. You could see that in the extents of these dresses. You could see that in Ollie Alexander's attire as Algernon. The whole thing was the theatrical equivalent of a three tiered afternoon tea tray filled with these gorgeous and delicious French fondant fans fancies. On which note, I think that is everything that I have to say about the Importance of Being Earnest at the Noel Coward Theatre in the West End. I would love more of you to go and see this production for yourselves. If you are not local to the uk, if you get a chance to see what I think was a recorded version from National Theatre Live at the National. Check out that production as well. The cast may be largely different but I dare say much of the charm and the sensibility will have been the same. And for those of you that have seen the production in person, please let me know all of your thoughts in the comments section down below. In the meantime, if you enjoyed listening to mine, make sure to subscribe to my theatre themed YouTube channel. You can turn on notifications so YouTube lets you know every time I share a new review or another video or you can go follow me on podcast platforms. Thank you so much for listening to this review. I hope that you enjoyed and I hope as always that everyone is staying safe and that you have a stagey day. For 10 more seconds, I'm Mickey Jo Theatre. Oh my God. Hey, thanks for watching. Have a stagey day. Subscribe.