The importance of being Earnest
The Lyric Theatre’s production of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest is unlike any version of the play you will have seen. It borrows from Monty Python, adds in Gilbert and Sullivan, has Algernon going on a trip (well, he is hitting the hookah) and is a gas. As Gwendolyn observes in the first act, “In matters of great importance, style not sincerity, is the vital thing.” Under Jimmy Fay’s direction, this production majors in style.
We enter the rather PG Wodehouse world of idle, rich young men, butlers and disparaging remarks about marriage via a slightly slow first scene. Lane the butler was a bit lame. Yet there are touches of genius here. It’s a man’s world and the male relationships are initially most important. Algernon (wonderful Conor O’Donnell) is all over Jack at times. Adam Gilliam brings off a more reticent man about town well. When the women enter, the dynamic naturally changes. In order not to allow the young women characters to seem vapid, mere pawns in the marriage game, Fay has exaggerated them, maybe at times going gloriously over the top . Gwendolyn, magnificent Meghan Tyler, physically throws herself into excited positions when flirting with the less obviously enthusiastic Jack. He is in love but more demurely. Later on, the same thing is done with Cecily (winning Calla Hughes Nic Aoidh) who skips about constantly and throws a tantrum when it seems she can’t get married to Algy.
The obstacle, of course, is Lady Bracknell, marriage broker and formidable aunt. Allison Harding is peerless. In the famous handbag scene she gave a different word, frown, the full Wagnerian force, reinventing the question about Jack’s antecedents as just that, a question. She said “Handbag?” as if Edith Evans had never uttered the immortal line.
In the country, everything came to life. O’Donnell’s lothario in shades stole the show and was superb in a bright pink jacket. Ther sherbet colours of the costumes by Catherine Kodicek gave a hint of a new world. The romance between Canon Chasuble (Marty Maguire) and Miss Prism (Jo Donnelly) was hilariously well done and went against the rules.
In between Neil O’Driscoll’s filmed inserts, a homage to Terry Gilliam, we got a real sense of this trivial comedy for serious people, as Wilde put it. For he is satirising the stuffy Victorian morals and hypocrisy, when name and more importantly fortune, count more than what kind of chap is proposing to the girl. With one’s mental image of the Monty Python descending foot and rude noise, you get the raspberry directed at the materialistic hypocrisy of the rules-obsessed era. There is a serious point and a sense at the end, when the couples’ desires are granted in absurd manner, that the 1895 norms will be swept away. The women are reaching modernity, sticking to their insistence on marrying an Ernest and resisting their beaux. Which makes the production values spot on.
What values they are. In panto style, we sang along to The man who broke the bank in Monte Carlo. We heard When I was a Lad and Three Little Girls from School, we saw at the start adverts for modern health-giving machines and the seaside. It’s a changing world, volatile and fascinating as portrayed here.
What this Importance of Being Earnest underlined was the importance of remaining creative with the classics.
Jane Hardy
The Importance of Being Earnest runs until July 6.
