THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST, ROYAL EXCHANGE THEATRE, MANCHESTER
THE grand master of wit has fallen out of fashion lately, but in this splendid, rip-roaring new version Oscar Wilde is about to enjoy a tumultuous renaissance.
How to revive a classic. When the Royal Exchange staged Sheila Delaney’s 1950’s period piece A Taste of Honey, that’s what it was, a snapshot of northern England in pre-Corrie days, and some wondered the relevance in a world when having a different race father and mother is hardly noticed, and every girl has a gay best friend.
But Earnest is timeless, the wit and the comedy and the battle between profound and trivial as relevant today as ever. And here, under the inspired direction of Josh Roche, it hasn’t taken much to stage a version which feels SO twenty first century.
There’s the fabulous, simple but oh so pink set, there’s a bit of slapstick with a muffin fight, there’s a zany climb on a precarious ladder as Robin Morrisey ( a most gorgeously earnest Jack) searches for THE handbag among the audience in the upper tier. And there’s some true genius comic timing involving a coffee machine and a leaf blower.
But most of all there’s the mobile phone. It takes very little time before you start to think that this is the defining play of the Instagram generation, full of insights into the artificial ways that people try to invent themselves, playing out now through social media.
This notion reaches heights of perfection in Rumi Sutton’s Cecily, a pouting and petulant denim-clad teenager for whom there’s no reality without the selfie. Indeed, she creates her own reality with the Insta picture of an engagement ring months before actually meeting Algernon (played with louche insouciance by Parth Thackerer)… and calling off the imaginary engagement , with a selfie, obviously.
And in her fantastically sharp and pacey exchange with prim and stiffly upper lipped upper class Gwendolen (Phoebe Price) comes the sharpest observation of moral codes and social mores. The timing here is extraordinary, the impact devastatingly funny.
The handbag line that everyone knows above everything else in this play is delivered by Abigail Cruttenden as the most sharp-tongued Lady Bracknell who dominates every scene she enters with a fearfully intimidating presence.
Then there’s the hapless governess Miss Prism (Emma Cunniffe) and her devotion to the Rev Dr Chasuble (Ian Bartholomew) , and divinely comic interventions by James Quinn as the butler and the gardener, all raising this to the heights of the best comedy of errors. The staging, too, at the Royal Exchange, presents opportunities for perfectly timed entrances and exits. It’s fast, it’s slick and it’s utterly unmissable.
The Importance of Being Earnest runs until July 20. Details and tickets: http://www.royalexchange.co.uk
Stagey Lady 