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Edward Franklin as Algernon, Cathy Tyson as Lade
Bracknell, Darren Bennett as Lane, Martha Mackintosh as Gwendolen and
Fela Lufadeju as Ernest . . . or is it John. Pictures: Tom Wren. The Importance of Being Earnest
Birmingham Rep
**** OSCAR Wilde’s gloriously trivial comedy
for serious people can hold its own quite comfortably against pretty
well anything, even a glittering, rather ostentatious makeover in the
new production at Birmingham Rep. It is a delightful old friend, so well-known and
so familiar that a ripple of anticipation runs through the audience as
each classic line approaches, completed by a wave of comfortable
laughter. Indeed a lady nearby was laughing before the lines were even
delivered. That’s dedication to the cause. Director Nikolai Foster used art nouveau furnitur Isla Shaw’s designs also saw some interesting
costumes. Most characters carried an impression of late Victorian dress,
except that John Worthing often looked rather like an extra from a
1970’s pop video – his leather panted mourning dress in particular,
setting him as a time traveller from a different age
But this is Wilde at his finest, able to resist any attempt at introducing any hint of a contemporary feel and director Nikolai Foster might have made his mark on the setting but is wise enough to bow to Wilde’s mastery when it comes to the words. In Wilde's satire of the Victorian upper classes
every character has its own importance but towering above them all is
Lady Bracknell. Cathy Tyson glares down superbly in a masterful
performance from her lofty heights as the formidable guardian of all
things right and proper in late Victorian society, turning snobbery and
class into an art form. She has some of the classic lines of theatre and
delivers them with haughty relish.
Edward Franklin is a wonderfully flippant
Algernon, hedonistic in a most genial way, treating life as a game, and,
as befitting a well-bred man about town, he is also well broke. Fela Lufadeju is a more serious sort of chap as
Ernest Worthing, or John if you happen to meet him in the country. With
an 18 year-old ward and household to maintain as John, he is a respected
country gent and hardly lets his hair down when he steps off the train
as his supposedly carefree wicked younger brother Ernest in London, as
seen by his desire on a night on the town to do . . . nothing. Love interest comes from Lady Bracknell’s
daughter Gwendoline, played by Martha Mackintosh as confidently and
dogmatically as one might expect of a young lady well-schooled by
her mother in the niceties of the social mores and fashions of the age.
Ernest is besotted by her. Then there is John’s ward Cecily played with a lovely mix of innocence and romantic fantasy by Sharan Phull. She sweeps Algernon off his tan and yellow shoed feet – Algernon also being Ernest at this point, even though Ernest has just died of a severe chill in Paris. Cecily and Gwendolen, meanwhile, are both engaged to the same Ernest . . . even though the said Ernest, dead or alive, doesn't actually exist - oh, do keep up at the back! And among the gay young things and their identity
crisis a more mature romance is blossoming between the pedantic and
rather dull Canon, Dr Chasuble, played in a nicely measured way by
Dominic Gately, and Cecily’s governess, the rather fussy Miss Prism, who
might have a future career as a Margaret Thatcher lookalike, played in a
sterling no nonsense manner by Angela Clerkin – no nonsense that is
until her dramatic revelation at the climax. And fussing around it all is Darren Bennett as
first butler Lane in London, upper class and rather superior, and then
Merriman, a more expressive butler, with a touch of flounce, in the
Worthing country estate – a pair of servants always dignified and
always, one feels, rather amused by and disdainful of the antics of the
upper classes. The cast of eight work well together with some
exquisite timing as Wilde’s celebrated lines bounce between them
delightfully as Algernon and John dig themselves deeper and deeper into
their romantic holes until we reach a pleasantly happy ending and the
discovery of the importance of being earnest.
It is a play which is always a pleasure to watch
– I am well into double figures and I never tire of Wilde’s wonderful
wit and clever construction. It might be lightweight but by golly when
it is well done, as here, it is great fun. As for the mirrors . . . Foster saw them used to
good effect in a fashion show and saw them as a “valid way to look at
the play in a contemporary context”. In his programme notes he declares
that with the period furniture the audience feel part of the 1895 world
of Wilde but because they will be reflected in the mirrors “hopefully it
draws them deeper into the space and makes them think about themselves a
bit more as well.” Whatever. Call me old fashioned but I found the
set distracting, an unnecessary intrusion into one of the favourite
comedies of the English stage. Opinion among the audience seemed divided. There
were the traditionalists backing my view that if it ain’t broke why fix
it and those who thought the glitzy set gave a sparkling modern feel to
a stage classic - old-style Wilde in a new-style setting. No one, it
seems, was ambivalent. Beyond the mirrors, director Foster has created a
very funny, excellent Earnest but, on reflection, one might
say, he has also achieved something more than that, he has got the
audience talking and thinking about the production – and, after all,
isn’t that something theatre is all about. To 24-09-16 Roger Clarke 14-09-16
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to anchor the play in its time - it premièred in 1895 - but the most
striking feature is a huge box of a stage with angled roof, along with
walls and floor covered in large mirrors – but more of that later.