Tag Archives: The Importance of Being Earnest

The Importance of Being Earnest

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The Tower Theatre

The Importance of Being Earnest

The Importance of Being Earnest

The Tower Theatre

Reviewed – 6th January 2020

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“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 β€œwho am I?” rather than β€œwhere 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 β€œMaid” (Nea CornΓ©r) who awakens them and indeed she is at the core of what the production is aiming to do. CornΓ©r 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 β€œto 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 β€œforeigners” 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 Γ–zdemiroğlu 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 Γ–ΔŸΓΌn 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 Γ‡avuşoğlu (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, β€œI 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 | β˜…β˜…β˜…Β½ | October 2018
Table | β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜… | November 2018
The Seagull | β˜…β˜…β˜… | November 2018
Talk Radio | β˜…β˜…β˜…Β½ | March 2019
Happy Days | β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜… | April 2019
Little Light | β˜…β˜…β˜… | June 2019
The Beauty Queen Of Leenane | β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜… | November 2019

 

Click here to see our most recent reviews

 

The Importance of Being Earnest
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Tabard Theatre

Importance of Being Earnest

The Importance of Being Earnest

Tabard Theatre

Reviewed – 9th June 2019

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“it is ultimately the cast’s joyful delivery that decorates this production with festoons of colour”

 

Despite the initial success of Oscar Wilde’s β€œThe Importance of Being Earnest”, its opening coincidentally marked his fall from grace at the height of his career. Wilde would write no further comic or dramatic work and his notoriety caused the West End premiere to be pulled. Even the ensuing Broadway run closed after just sixteen performances. It is a sad paradox that mirrors those firmly embedded in his writing but, fortunately for theatre audiences worldwide, the play survived and has stood the test of time; to become what has been described as β€œthe second most known and quoted play in English after Hamlet”.

This familiarity can be a curse as well as a blessing for directors. David Phipps-Davis’ production at the Tabard Theatre, however, certainly falls into the latter with its lovingly faithful and light-hearted joyride through the lives and double lives of these mischievous characters. Yes, we may be on very safe ground, but the cast of eight keep us on high alert throughout with their expertly subtle handling of the text. Nothing seems overplayed, which allows space for the nonsense and illogicality to leap out of the dialogue.

The bizarre plot ridicules Victorian sensibilities, but here, set three decades later in the twenties, it loses none of the punch. It is the story of two bachelors, John β€˜Jack’ Worthington and Algernon β€˜Algy’ Moncrieff, who create alter egos named Ernest to escape their tiresome lives. Attempting to win the hearts of two women, the pair struggle to keep up with their own stories and become tangled in a tale of deception, disguise and misadventure.

Samuel Oakes as β€˜Algy’ and Tim Gibson as β€˜Jack’ have a natural onstage chemistry, bouncing off each other while pitching the dialogue with the ease of a juggler. Throwing their lines into the air, they never let any of them drop. Lady Bracknell is similarly natural, played with a welcome understatement by Non Vaughan-O’Hagan who neatly highlights the snobbery and materialism without resorting to caricature. Melissa Knighton captures the curt crispness of Gwendolen’s unassailable pretension in a strong professional debut performance. Kirsty Jackson occasionally slips into jarring histrionics as the hopeless romantic, Cecily, but otherwise endears us to her mad-as-a-hatter waywardness. Jo Ashe sparkles as her governess, Miss Prism, refreshingly unveiling a softer side with flirtatious asides that belie the prudish veneer. The apple of her eye is Canon Chasuble, played by Dean Harris who never fails to put a smile on your face when he wanders, bumbling, onto the stage. And to cap it all Paul Foulds gives a star turn as the valet, the butler, the gardener, the chauffeur and Mr Gribsby – the solicitor who turns up to arrest Algernon for unpaid hotel bills – a β€˜lost’ character reinstated by Phipps-Davis from an early draft of the script.

Lacking the darker undertones of Wilde’s earlier work, this interpretation is playful and stylised but measured out strictly within the confines of respectability. While Leah Sams’ costumes are as colourful as the language, the inbuilt irreverence sometimes appears monochrome. But it is ultimately the cast’s joyful delivery that decorates this production with festoons of colour.

 

Reviewed by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Andreas Grieger

 


The Importance of Being Earnest

Tabard Theatre until 23rd June

 

Previously reviewed at this venue:
The Lady With a Dog | β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜… | March 2018
Sophie, Ben, and Other Problems | β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜… | April 2018
Sirens of the Silver Screen | β˜…β˜…β˜… | June 2018
Sexy Laundry | β˜…β˜…β˜… | November 2018
Carl’s Story | β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜… | March 2019
Harper Regan | β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜… | May 2019

 

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