Olly Alexander and the cast of West End transfer of The Importance of Being Earnest. Photo by Marc BrennerOscar Wilde’s perennial favourite in which mistaken identity and class snobbery rub shoulders in Victorian society, has been lavished with a rude updating in Max Webster’s gaudy and flounce-filled production. The usual staid drawing room effrontery is turned into dandyesque effetery with a large slice of sexual ambiguity thrown in for good measure.
Garish sets and costumes by Rae Smith (which require several in-front-of-curtain filler moments to enable the crew to execute scene changes) give a sumptuously old fashioned feel to proceedings as Algernon Moncrieff (Olly Alexander) and Jack Worthing (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett) josh and cajole one another as they discuss the objects of their affection Gwendolen Fairfax (Kitty Hawthorne) and Cecily Cardew (Jessica Whitehurst). The first, is daughter to the indomitable Lady Bracknell (Stephen Fry in a gender bending turn), the other an ebullient young ward soon to reach her majority. Completing the characters are Miss Prism (Shobna Gulati) who serves as Ms Cardew’s governess, and the man to whom she is secretly devoted, The Rev Canon Chasuble (Hugh Dennis). Finally but perhaps most notable of all, both butlers (Merriman in town, and Lane in the country), are delivered with delicious contempt and hilarious befuddlement by Hayley Carmichael. Her every appearance is a bright and eagerly awaited interlude as the remaining cast members witter and chirrup through their lines oblivious to the butlers’ largely silent, but mesmerising movements.
Both Alexander and Stewart-Jarrett undoubtedly know their lines, but are evidently far less familiar with the concept of high comedy, where more nuanced reactions and facial expressions better serve the dialogue and overall effectiveness of the story telling. Here, there is a tendency to overplay and mug where it is completely unnecessary. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Fry pitches his delivery with a more assured air, whilst the vibrant minxes of the piece Hawthorne and Whitehurst, have more fun and games than any young women of the period would have been permitted and as such, are an absolute joy to behold. Prism and Chasuble are largely lost in the general raucous melee, but such is the lot of Wilde’s filler parts.
There is no mistaking that this is Fry’s night. As Lady Bracknell, he is adorned with battleship grey curls welded to his cranium and bedecked in heavy layers of emerald green. One can almost smell the moth balls and rose water. In his hands, there is steadfast adherence to Wilde’s subversive observations on the ascendence of the moneyed business classes. Bracknell’s ear for a propitious economic match for Gwendolen have previously discounted Jack as inherently unsuitable due to his doubtful lineage, demonstrates the hypocrisy of the upper classes in one fell swoop. The production’s excess of campy frippery however — which includes an opening bacchanalia in which Alexander and Co writhe atop a grand piano in drag, feels entirely unnecessary and a meaningless distraction from the sharp wit to follow.
During one notable exchange, Gwendolen asserts In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity is the vital thing. Webster’s production seems to have taken this line at face value rather than as the cynical and damning observation which Wilde intended. Consequently, whilst there is much to admire and enjoy in this playful outing, the mocking intent in Wilde’s portentous pillorying is in danger of being overwhelmed and subsumed by mere campy gaudiness. That said, it proves an entertaining and colourful pantomime.
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST runs 2 hours and 35 minutes with a 20 minute interval and continues at the Noël Coward until 10th January 2026.
