THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST at Reading Abbey Ruins

★★★★

“a wonderful adaptation of the Wilde Classic in a uniquely atmospheric setting”

The wit of the famed Irish playwright sparkled in the evening sun in this outdoor production by Progress Theatre. In the shadow of the gaol in which he was incarcerated for ‘the love that dare not speak its name’ well known Wildean epigrams bounce off the walls of the former Reading Abbey’s chapter house. We all know and relish Lady Bracknell’s (Caroline Warner) pronouncement on the ‘carelessness of the loss of two parents’, her astonishment at the receptacle in which the infant Jack Worthing (Chris Westgate) was found or the ‘immateriality of the line’ on which he was found and her daughter Gwendolen Fairfax’s (Stephanie Ness) declaration of the ‘sensational reading to be found in one’s own diary providing entertainment on a train journey’. However, the cast and director (Steph Dewar) highlighted many others including ‘The truth is rarely plain and never simple’, ‘All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does, and that is his’ and ‘The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.’

The simplistic but effective setting covering the three acts in the town house of Algernon Moncrieff and Jack’s Hertfordshire estate works well within the historic setting; despite my initial misgivings that this ‘drawing-room comedy’ might be lost in the expanse of the outdoor venue. Costumes (Wendy Hobson and Chris Moran) and the required minimum of furniture and props provide the period elegance to anchor the production in its mid-1890s setting. The skilful interval split, mid Act II, works well to keep the pace racing along towards the conclusion.

Hindered in his attempts to keep his two worlds from colliding by the intervention of his friend Algernon, played with bubbling mischievousness by Matthew Urwin, Jack finally resorts to ‘killing off’ his fictional miscreant brother Earnest, who by continually misbehaving ‘in town’, provides Jack the perfect excuse whenever he needs to escape from the country. Algernon, who also has a fictional reason for leaving town to visit the country, in turn becomes enamoured with Jack’s young ward, Cecily Cardew (Nancy Gittus). Prepared to sacrifice their double lives for the love of Gwendolen and Cecily both men stride haphazardly forward to discover the importance of being ‘Earnest’.

Between the two young women a bond of ‘sisterhood’ is quickly reached and equally quickly ripped asunder on their first meeting. Only to be restored on finding themselves both to have been misled by their suitors. The speedy change is achieved with excellent precision and hilarity from Ness and Gittus. Ness is easily recognisable as the daughter of Warner’s Lady Bracknell both in mannerisms and speech. She deftly uses the dialogue to create a believable character of a young woman of society used to getting her own way. Whilst Warner’s approach to the notorious ‘handbag’ line of Lady Bracknell is to expertly underplay it with effective emphasis of shock and outrage at the presumption of Jack expecting her daughter to ‘marry into a cloakroom and forge an alliance with a parcel’.

In juxtaposition to the slightly smug and sarcastic Moncrieff and increasingly vexed and frustrated Worthing, the Rector of the Hertfordshire estate, Dr. Chasuble (Paul Gittus) and Cecily’s tutor, Miss Prism (Liz Paulo), provide a simmering, sublimated sexual tension to great comic effect. They, along with Algernon’s manservant, Lane (Dean Stephenson) and Jack’s butler, Merriman (John Goodman) who both portray with few words and a good many telling facial expressions the knowing yet rather put upon non-leisured-class, provide excellent comedic cameos in counterpoint to their erring employers.

Progress Theatre have produced a wonderful adaptation of the Wilde Classic in a uniquely atmospheric setting.