The Stage

The Importance of Being Earnest

Published Friday 20 May 2005 at 11:05 by Jeremy Brien

It is Oscar Wilde but not as we know him. This all-male version of the greatest comedy of manners in the English language is so high camp that you almost need a team of Sherpas to negotiate it. The big question is, would the maestro have approved? It is hard to imagine he would not have given the thumbs up to director/designer David Fielding’s witty visual extravaganza, complete with phallic cucumber wallpaper and privet hedges pruned to look like a giant handbag.

More problematic is the way in which the production’s endless determination to unearth Wilde’s hidden homosexual subtext suborns the flow of his brilliant bon mots. There are hilarious scenes aplenty, highlighted by the country garden confrontation between Simon Trinder’s butch Gwendolen and Joseph Chance’s coy Cecily, but far too often Wilde’s social commentary is overwhelmed by the search for homoerotic meaning in virtually every line.

In the end the dialogue emerges as both tired and inconsequential, almost unheard of in any Wilde production. Indeed, considerably more amusing are the hilarious programme notes, which even discover suggestive same-sex symbolism in the buttered muffins devoured by Algernon.

Naturally, the whole bizarre affair does open up some marvellous acting opportunities, although James Frost (Algernon) and Christopher Staines (Jack) spend so much time exploring their effeminate side that it is difficult to believe they are in love with anyone else. In contrast, Michael Fitzgerald is dealt a better hand as a traditionally monstrous Lady Bracknell, while Daniel Hill provides the hit of the evening with his ‘Miss Whiplash’ approach to the usually prim Miss Prism.