THEATRE REVIEW: The Importance of Being Earnest

It’s not often that I get to shows - usually when I go abroad. So while I do have a category for it, expect to see things added to it for maybe one month out of the year. Unless, of course, I actually start paying attention to the things that tour in my area.

That aside.

The Importance of Being Earnest was my priority ticket for this trip. It’s my favorite play ever, besides which it now has Stephen Fry playing Lady Bracknell. I’d heard positive things about the previous cast of this production (which included Ncuti Gatwa as Algernon), so I was looking forward to it.

Short version? I liked it in theory, but some things didn’t feel right in practice.

Production-wise, it took a handful of liberties. An early scene shows Algy (in this production played by Olly Alexander) in a big pink ballgown playing the piano at a party. It’s a fully drag, very lavish scene. It’s not a scene in the original, but it very much set the stage for the aesthetic of this specific production. Both in and of itself and as a marker for the mood of this production, I enjoyed it.

Visually it was lovely. The costumes were gorgeous and colorful, equal parts coordinated and opposing. (Algy’s white suit against Jack’s black mourning garb was a great image.) I liked the use of front-of-curtain mini-scenes to cover set changes. In other words, lots of fantastic choices.

But the actual directing of the cast felt like… a lot?

I remember seeing Stephen Fry as Oscar Wilde in Wilde. There was a scene where he was overseeing a rehearsal of Lady Windemere’s Fan, and he cautioned the cast not to luxuriate in their jokes and wordplay. To paraphrase, he said that the actors should act as though this is simply how people talk. I’ve taken that to heart, and I have noticed that Oscar Wilde feels wrong when you give his words the full send.

The four lead cast members - most of whom I’ve seen in other things and whom I’ve enjoyed in other performances - all played their roles as if they were constantly told to be bigger and more. And that’s not in reference to the content, like the playing-up of things Wilde himself had to keep hidden, but rather the delivery. So many of the upsells of lines (Miss Fairfax talking about “vibrations” being a big one) felt like someone somewhere in the production feared the audience wouldn’t understand the joke. Again, I’ve seen three of the four leads in other things, and I’ve seen them be fabulous. This feels more like delivering what the director wanted.

Algy, easily the one who could have gotten away with being the most flamboyant, was the one who carried this off best. He was still big, but he was big in a way that felt like that’s just who he was - not like his actor was digging for a laugh. And even when he was going what felt “too big,” it was always tone-matching another character. Even his asides to the audience felt natural where they could have felt like a bridge too far. I’m not at all familiar with Olly Alexander, but this performance has made me want to be.

It feels like a bit of a cop-out to say that Fry as Lady Bracknell was the linchpin of the production, but he really was. He was very clearly playing Stephen Fry as The Dame, which was probably the best way to approach it under these circumstances. But he let the lines do the work for him and got more natural laughs. He is easily my favorite Lady Bracknell so far, and far and away my favorite member of this cast. Could it be that the audience was primed to laugh for the national treasure? Maybe. I suppose. If I’m being diplomatic. But he and the rest of the “older gen” cast in general - specifically Miss Prism and Dr. Chasuble, who were both fantastic separately and adorable together - felt somewhat more balanced.

The short version is I wanted to love this. I wanted to be fully in the joy of this vibrant production, and in many, many cases, I was. But I feel like this production was constantly at war with itself: making bright and bold additions to the set, the music, the casting, and yet feeling like Wilde’s words needed to be screamed to be appreciated. Was I disappointed? No. I still had a wonderful night, and I still loved what I saw. But I feel like my quest to see the best possible production of this play has been only half-fulfilled, and I still dream of the production that hits Just Right.