Purists may reach for their smelling salts at the National Theater’s wild revival of “The Importance of Being Earnest,” the Oscar Wilde comedy concerned with self-identity, veiled sexuality and forming “an alliance,” as one character drolly puts it, “with a parcel.”
More adventuresome audience members, however, are likely to have a blast with this (often literally) unbuttoned take on a familiar text from the director Max Webster, who was a 2023 Tony nominee for “Life of Pi.”
Keeping one foot in the here and now, this “Earnest” — which runs through Jan. 25 and will be in movie theaters worldwide via National Theater Live from Feb. 20 — lands the verbal invention and wit of Wilde’s 1895 classic while incorporating contemporary music, the occasional swear word and a decidedly queer sensibility. At times, it may indulge in one wink at the audience too many — but even then, Webster’s intention is clearly to release a time-honored comedy from the confines of period convention.
Does this sound too much? I doubt Wilde would have thought so. The Irish writer’s renegade spirit is felt here from the outset, with the introduction of a high-camp prologue that finds a gown-wearing, pink-gloved Algernon Moncrieff (Ncuti Gatwa, TV’s latest Doctor Who,) tearing into Grieg’s Piano Concerto as if he were the star attraction at Dalston Superstore, a queer East London nightlife venue that gets a passing mention.
Minutes later, the play proper begins, and Algernon reappears in an extravagantly patterned suit worthy of the Met Gala.
Wilde was imprisoned for “gross indecency” in the same year this play premiered, and while his misfortune was to live during a Victorian era when homosexuality was, to quote his beloved Lord Alfred Douglas, “the love that dare not speak its name,” this “Earnest,” by contrast, wears its sexual liberation like a badge of honor.
The labyrinthine narrative still ends with the expected heterosexual couplings, a neat array of pairings worthy of Shakespeare. But the evening also courses with a hedonistic abandon that renders gender irrelevant. At one point, the four young principals collectively land on a sofa in a joyful heap; at another moment, you understand at once that Algernon’s penchant for “bunburying” likely refers to his same-sex dalliances.
You may remember the plot: Two male libertines, each with an alter ego, pursue separate romantic conquests that converge as the action moves from London to two countryside locations, all of which are ravishingly designed by Rae Smith, of “War Horse” renown. A visual highlight is the second scene’s floral setting, including grassy slopes, which facilitate all sorts of physical comedy as the characters navigate the incline.
Gatwa’s mischievously flamboyant Algie is box-office catnip and the run is almost sold out largely on the strength of this likable actor’s onscreen success. But the emotional stakes reside in the wonderful Hugh Skinner’s Jack Worthing, the foundling whose desire for self-discovery provides a narrative through line among the characters’ aphorisms and observations. (One among many: “The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”) The climax finds Jack perched atop the proscenium arch on his way to a triumphant self-assertion — he is, in fact, Earnest — that prompts real emotion alongside the mirth.
The women in the bachelors’ freewheeling orbit take somewhat longer to come into focus. Playing “little Cecily,” Jack’s ward on whom Algernon casts a romantic eye, Eliza Scanlen tends to push the character’s petulance a little too hard. She’s at her best in her fierce rivalry with Jack’s intended, Gwendolen (a giddy Ronke Adekoluejo, at one point sporting a braided wig that is itself a work of art).
Keeping a watchful eye over the shenanigans is the unassailable Lady Bracknell, Algernon’s aunt, who is here played with effortlessly funny disdain — not to mention a delicious Caribbean accent — by the Olivier Award winner Sharon D Clarke, who sails into view wearing the first of several formidable hats.
The play’s signature role, Lady Bracknell can be a tough nut to crack, not least as it brings with it among the most famous questions — “a handbag?” — in English theater. Clarke clears that hurdle with low-voiced ease, the moment set up in advance by a miniature handbag affixed to the stage curtain that greets the audience at the start of the show.
The elder generation extends beyond Lady Bracknell, taking in the fretful Miss Prism (Amanda Lawrence), Cecily’s governess who isn’t altogether pleased with the lovesick youngster’s habit of “thinking for herself.” Prism, too, participates in the rising conviviality and ends up partnered with Reverend Chasuble (Richard Cant), a man of the cloth given to notable slips of the tongue.
But it’s Clarke as Lady Bracknell who lands the laughs — and big ones — whether opining about the French Revolution or the specifics of Britain’s railways, right up to the play’s climax, which Skinner’s Jack delivers with a vigor that brought a lump to my throat. The sense of occasion extends to the bows, with a costume parade for the curtain call that must have pushed the show’s budget to the brink and beyond.
Fun? The production is that, to be sure. Or as these characters might prefer to put it, “faaaabulous.”
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