Simon Baker as John Worthing and Jack Hobbis as
Algernon Moncrief, men about town . . . and different men about country
. . .
The Importance of Being Earnest
Highbury Theatre Centre
*****
OSCAR Wilde’s wickedly observed satire of
late Victorian social mores is so well known that performance has become
more important than the production.
We know the story, the delicious wit, the
characters and the much loved scenes which all make it a favourite play
and the reason many are in the audience in the first place – so the only
unknown, the only mystery, is how well it is performed and in this case
Highbury have done a simply splendid job.
Jack Hobbis and Simon Baker as the eligible young
men about town, Algernon Moncrieff and Jack Worthing, are quite superb,
the best pairing I have seen for some time with Hobbis’s Algernon
managing to give the impression the whole of life is an amusing
adventure while Baker’s Jack has a more serious, more pained air.
Both have some wonderful looks and glances to
animate their characters in their troubles with both Lady Bracknell and
her niece Gwendolen and Jack’s ward Cecily as the their comfortable,
bachelor lifestyles both real and fictitious, start to unravel.
Country landowner John Worthing, known as Jack,
has invented a brother, Earnest, who gets into terrible scrapes
necessitating him going to London regularly to sort things out where, in
London, as Earnest, he is friends with Algernon, who in turn, has
invented a friend, Bunbury, who lives permanently at death’s door,
requiring regular visits which allows him to escape to the country. Both
were created to avoid social obligations and both, like tiresome
chickens, are coming home to roost.
When Earnest, who is really Jack, falls for
Gwendolen and Algernon discovers and, pretending to be Earnest, then
falls in love with Cecily trouble follows as sure a night follows day.
HEADSTRONG YOUNG WOMAN
Izzy Richard’s Gwendolen is a forceful headstrong
young woman, who seems more than capable of taking on Lady Bracknell
while Liz Adnitt’s Cecily is at first demure but, encouraged by the
excitement of a visit by the wicked Earnest she becomes an ally in the
sisterhood’s pursuit of love, or perhaps more accurately, marriage, with
the powerful Gwendolen.
Sharon Clayton’s Lady Augusta Bracknell is less
haughty, less arrogant than many portrayals although she still manages
to flex her social muscles when things are not going her way – her way
of course being the only way with anything else being . . . well wrong.
Many of her lines are so well known that the laughs are there before the
line has finished. As soon as she said “To lose one parent….” the
titters of anticipation started.
Part of Wilde’s skill is starting with a
collection of disparate threads and slowly pulling them together thus we
have Miss Laetitia Prism, the prim and proper governess played by Sandra
Haynes. Prism is an unfulfilled romantic of a spinster, a dreamer with
many more years behind her than ahead, hopelessly in love with the
country priest.
Had she been in her
late 20s she could have found herself in a romantic novel by a Brontë
or an Austen, as it is she has carried the burden of the terrible secret
- the key to the whole play -for some 30 years.
Beneath the cloak of respectability between Miss
Prism and her priest, Canon Chasuble, there is a hint of repressed, dare
we say it, lust. Rob Alexander’s unmarried man of the cloth is a little
absent minded, unworldly and obviously clever, albeit not in anything
that would be of any practical use, but beneath the rather vague
exterior stirs a man with feelings for Miss Prism.
Dave Douglas and Robert Gregory provide the
butlers Lane in London and Merriman in the country with Hazel Landreth
completing the cast as the maid.
Malcolm Robertshaw’s splendid set shows a high
attention to detail with some nice touches such as changing paintings to
distinguish the same walls serving as rooms in London and the country
and a well thought out glimpse of the furniture indoors from the garden
of Jack’s house in the country mirroring the setting of the final act.
We even had distant birdsong in the background in
the garden.
The costumes were also excellent in what was a
very pleasing, well paced performance directed by Ian Appleby. To
26-09-15
Roger Clarke
15-09-15
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