Tag Archives: The Importance of Being Earnest

The Importance of Being Earnest

★★★½

Turbine Theatre

The Importance

The Importance of Being Earnest

Turbine Theatre

Reviewed – 20th February 2020

★★★½

 

“packs in lots of entertaining elements but teeters dangerously on the brink of panto”

 

An entire cast stranded on a broken-down bus, the producer and stage-manager of ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ must make a hasty decision, if the show is to go on. In an evening of quick changes, larger-than-life characters and bustling choreography, they helter-skelter through Oscar Wilde’s iconic parody of constrained Victorian morality. Jack and his friend Algernon have both invented imaginary counterparts, Ernest and Bunbury, to enable them to escape any unwelcome or tedious obligation. As their intentions for marriage intensify, their stories unravel and being Ernest appears to be of the utmost importance.

Written at a significant time in his life, just as his homosexuality was revealed and condemned, it is a deceptively flippant comment on the dual identity many people felt the need to live. London’s vibrant social scene with its clubs, hotels and theatres – not to mention the West End’s red-light district – would have been an irresistible, and therefore common, distraction for the English male aristocracy. Although marriage figures centrally as plot, debate and comment, the homosexual asides, ‘Ernest’, a euphemism for homosexual and ‘Cecily’, a reference to rent boys, are far from subtle. And this is reflected in the flamboyancy of the production which packs in lots of entertaining elements but teeters dangerously on the brink of panto.

Director, Bryan Hodgson, produces a lively build-up of pandemonium as the plot thickens and the denouement accelerates. There are interjections to remind us that the cast are still on their way, but they are inconsistent and aren’t always attuned to the script. The multi-tasking actors, Aidan Harkins and Ryan Bennett succeed in impressively dexterous costume changes which become gradually more frenetic and resourceful with the entanglement of the play. There is a strong repartee established in the opening scene between Jack and Algernon but subsequently the characterisation is less balanced. Harkins’ portrayals of Lady Bracknell and Miss Prism are perhaps unconventional, but are well defined and fit convivially into the world of innuendos. As his own Lady Bracknell, Bennett is suitably overblown, yet his Cecily lacks any real persona. Of course, the point is that they are standing in at the last minute, but there is no real coherence here either.

Technically sharp, Sam Rowcliffe-Tanner’s lighting accompanies the exaggerated scenarios and the sound (Harry Smith) adds to some odd and rousing moments with Verdi’s ‘Dies Irae’ summing up Lady Bracknell’s appearance and the farcical scampering around to Brahms’ Hungarian Dance. Denise Cleal’s costumes cleverly combine period style with practical quick- change needs.

Camp, in the very French literary sense that influenced Wilde, this effervescent version of his classic comedy of manners (subtitled by the writer as ‘A Trivial Comedy for Serious People’), piles comic melodrama, slapstick and caricature onto his intellectual farce, producing a colourful rumpus of a show with a fun finale. Perhaps not appealing to everyone’s taste in classical theatre but, judging by the standing ovation, popular with many.

 

Reviewed by Joanna Hetherington

Photography by John-Webb Carter

 


The Importance of Being Earnest

Turbine Theatre until 29th February

 

Previously reviewed at this venue:
Torch Song | ★★★★★ | September 2019
High Fidelity | ★★★★★ | November 2019

 

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The Importance of Being Earnest

★★★

The Tower Theatre

The Importance of Being Earnest

The Importance of Being Earnest

The Tower Theatre

Reviewed – 6th January 2020

★★★

 

“occasionally bewilders and sometimes misses both mark and humour, but is never less than fascinating and intensely real”

 

A quintessentially English play is being given a fascinating and refreshingly cosmopolitan spin at the Tower Theatre with Pan Productions’ new take on the Oscar Wilde classic The Importance of Being Earnest – played by immigrants.

The play is a comedy in which the leading characters create false identities in order to escape familial and social responsibilities. So it doesn’t take a huge leap of imagination to comprehend the thinking behind the enterprising company bringing people from different cultures and languages together to explore what it means to be from somewhere else and answer the question of “who am I?” rather than “where am I from?”

It is a decidedly ambitious project for a group of actors and creatives who spoke their first words in different languages but have made the UK their home.

As the audience enters they are greeted by the characters frozen on stage, occasionally twitching as though waiting to be brought back to life. It is the “Maid” (Nea Cornér) who awakens them and indeed she is at the core of what the production is aiming to do. Cornér moves silently around the foyer in character before the show starts, observing and assessing the audience. In the play she is the two butlers, Lane and Merriman, who Wilde uses to expose the shortcomings of the ridiculous upper class; here, although given few lines, she is the most confident when performing in English (she opens the play by faultlessly quoting Hamlet’s “to be or not to be” soliloquy) and it is she who corrects the actors when they slip into their own language or mispronounce words. Oddly, and often distractingly, she also capers around in the background during other scenes, which is increasingly mystifying.

The concept of “foreigners” performing stereotypical English roles is something Swiss-Turkish director Aylin Bozok enjoys playing with. The slight problem here is that each of the actors is clearly eminently capable of understanding Wilde’s words and characters and indeed they all do it rather well, which means that some of the rationale of the whole production is lost, as we don’t ever truly believe they are out of their comfort zone.

There are some exceptionally strong performances from the multicultural cast. Rarely has the character of Lady Bracknell been so rounded as Ece Özdemiroğlu skilfully suggests a snooty aristocrat who has risen through the classes, desperate to ensure her relatives achieve a social standing that she was not born to.

The leading romantic quartet of the piece is a delight, their awkwardness in matters of the heart reflecting their supposed discomfort with the play as actors. Louis Pottier Arniaud and Duncan Rowe play Jack and Algie as though to the comedy of manners born, while Pinar Öğün and Glykeria Dimou come closest to making us believe their uncomfortable vulnerability as a Turkish and Greek born duo respectively playing Gwendolen and Cecily.

Serpil Delice (as a strait-laced Miss Prism) and Irem Çavuşoğlu (Rev. Chasuble) complete the hard-working cast and add to the idea of identities being created and adapgted through private and public personas.

Bozok has also designed this production, a simple set on a large performing area consisting of a sofa, a bench and carpets, suggesting that this represents the expectations of a comedy about the elite by those unfamiliar with it. The black and white costumes also suggest a confinement of the actors’ creativity.

Sound (Neil McKeown) and lighting (Morgan Richards) are notably well-designed, sometimes enhancing a mood, occasionally standing in startling contrast to it.

Oscar Wilde once said, “I love acting. It is so much more real than life.” This production of The Importance of Being Earnest rediscovers, reinvents and reconstructs the text and story in a way that occasionally bewilders and sometimes misses both mark and humour, but is never less than fascinating and intensely real.

 

Reviewed by David Guest

Photography by Pozi Pyraz Saroglu

 

The Tower Theatre

The Importance of Being Earnest

The Tower Theatre until 18th January

 

Previously reviewed at this venue:
To Kill a Mockingbird | ★★★½ | October 2018
Table | ★★★★ | November 2018
The Seagull | ★★★ | November 2018
Talk Radio | ★★★½ | March 2019
Happy Days | ★★★★★ | April 2019
Little Light | ★★★ | June 2019
The Beauty Queen Of Leenane | ★★★★ | November 2019

 

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