Subtitled ‘A Trivial Comedy for Serious People’, Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest was an immediate hit when first premièred in London in 1895. As one of the most regularly staged English plays and having been translated into countless languages, this production directed by Adrian Noble and coming direct from a UK tour, is a faithful revival with one modern twist; Lady Bracknell is played by David Suchet.
If you thought it would be difficult to imagine Suchet as anything other than Agatha Christie’s eccentric Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot, complete with a perfectly waxed moustache and a funny walk, he is just as memorable as the majestic Lady Bracknell, and despite only appearing for two out of the three acts, is as domineering a presence as Wilde intended. The play might just as well have been called ‘The Importance of Being Lady Bracknell’, for when Suchet isn’t on stage, we all secretly yearn for him to make an appearance.
Lady Bracknell puts the fear of God into everyone with her cutting put-downs (which we end up discovering is merely inverted snobbery), and whilst Suchet never convinces us that we’re watching a woman, his camp portrayal, verging on the pantomime dame, is so hilarious that he hardly requires Wilde’s brilliantly witty lines in order to bring the house down; merely raising an eyebrow or flicking the train of the dress being enough to illustrate Lady Bracknell’s extreme displeasure – and it seems that little meets with her approval.
With a farcical plot centred around Victorian manners and mistaken identity, the drama opens in the London bachelor pad of dandy Algernon ‘Algie’ Moncrieff (Philip Cumbus) who is preparing to host his formidable aunt, Lady Bracknell, for tea whilst nursing a hangover. It is whilst explaining to his friend ‘Ernest’ Worthing (Michael Benz), the joys of having invented an invalid friend named Bunbury who offers him a convenient excuse whenever he wants to decline his aunt’s invitations, that he absent-mindedly eats the cucumber sandwiches to which Lady Bracknell is especially partial.
Ernest, whose name is actually Jack, is besotted by Lady Bracknell’s uppity daughter, Gwendolyn (Emily Barber), who declares that she couldn’t possibly love a man who wasn’t called Ernest. However, Lady Bracknell is less than impressed after a gruelling interrogation (complete with notepad) reveals that he has no pedigree and was merely ‘found’ at Victoria Station as a baby. ‘To be born, or at any rate bred, in a handbag, whether it has handles or not, seems to me to display a contempt for the ordinary decencies of family life that reminds one of the worst excesses of the French Revolution.’
After a highly amusing fracas over a dish of muffins, the chaps get into a whole lot of bother by leading double lives. Algie, after discovering that Jack has a pretty young ward who lives in the country, deviously obtains the address and visits, posing as Jack’s invented brother Ernest. Cecily (Imogen Doel) who has long since fantasised about her guardian’s ‘wicked’ brother, almost steals the show from Suchet when she reveals her passion for Ernest; a man she has never even met.
Peter McKintosh’s designs are meanwhile beautifully fitting of the period, and his vibrant interpretation of the garden in the second act is particularly successful in heightening the comedy value of Algie’s time in the country, not to mention the sub-plot of Cecily’s governess Miss Prism (Michele Dotrice) having a crush on the Reverend Canon Chasuble (Richard O’Callaghan) who will soon have to rechristen both men as ‘Ernest’. From beginning to end, this production of Wilde’s masterpiece displays an earnest frivolity.
The Importance of Being Earnest at the Vaudeville Theatre, London until 7th November 2015. For more information and tickets visit the website.
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