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Ernest still has that magic touch
More tea, Aunt Augusta? Lady Bracknell (Nick Caldecott) with wayward nephew Algernon (Matthew Douglas) discussing the meaning of life - but only as she knows it - over the bone china and Lipton's finest The
Importance of Being Earnest
Birmingham Rep The Old
Rep ***** THIS trivial comedy for serious people,
as Oscar Wilde put it, has been delighting audiences for 116 years and
the reasons for its enduring popularity are plain for all to see in this
splendid Birmingham Rep production. The play is running
alongside Tom Stoppard's Travesties,
which pays homage to Wilde's play,
using exactly the same cast but whereas
Travesties
is clever, too clever by half some might add, an intellectual work out,
Earnest
is glorious wit, pure and simple. The play is full of familiar quotes, known to
people who have never even seen it, and you feel the audience is waiting
expectantly for them in much the same way fans at a rock concert await
greatest hits and the cast do not disappoint, delivering them with style
and panache. They are superb although it is a little
disconcerting to find that Lady Bracknell is played by Nick Caldecott
who is . . . well . . . a bloke. This is one of the most famous female comic roles
in the theatre with probably the most famous actress to play the role
was Dame Edith Evans in both the celebrated 1939 Sir John Gielgud
production and the classic 1952 film. That being said it is not unknown
for men to play her ladyship. This is not Ernest meets Charley's Aunt
though and in this case I suspect that it is not because director Philip
Wilson would rather be doing Hairspray or that Nick
Cladecott is a closet Widow Twankey but is more to do with logistics. The exactly the same cast idea runs into a slight problem of gender with Stoppard having eight characters, but only three of them women while Wilde's eight (the Rep doubled up on the manservants Lane and Merriman) has four females. So one actor has to be . . . flexible and that
turns out to be Caldecott who after a memorable portrayal of James Joyce
in Travesties produces an even more memorable and imperious Aunt
Augusta, the authoritarian Lady Bracknell. Matthew Douglas as Algernon (Henry Garr in
Travesties) puts in another solid shift as the idle, amoral, witty
and charming bachelor living somewhat beyond his means in London while
Tom Davey (Trisan Tzara in Travesties) as his best friend Jack
has a range of facial expressions that were heaven sent for comedy.
Both have a secret. Londoner Algy has
fictitious friend, Bunbury, who exists at death's door so needs to be
visited whenever Algernon needs to get away or fancies a few days in the
country while Jack, who lives in the country, has a fictitious and
hedonistic brother called Ernest he has to visit whenever he wants to go
to London and indeed in London he is Ernest to all his friends. It is even as his brother Ernest that he asks Lady Bracknell's daughter, Gwendolen, to marry him. Emily Bowker (Gwen in Travesties) again
shows admirable timing and some beautiful comic touches Lady Bracknell though has other ideas as she
tries to maintain the standards and social graces and standings of the
aristocracy which are picked with surgical precision by Wilde. She came from little and married well and is
determined her daughter will do the same and is left with a dilemma when
she discovered Jack, or Ernest, has both income and property, a major
plus, but his parentage is . . . a handbag left at Victoria Station
which is not going to worry the compilers of Burke's Peerage. Meanwhile Emerald O'Hanrahan is again delightful
as Jack's Ward Cecily (the character with the same name in
Travesties) as she is pursued by Algernon who is pretending to
be Ernest at Jack's county pile in Hertforshire and she agrees to marry
him. His appearance is a slight problem for Jack who
then arrives in mourning for the death of his fictional brother who it
turns out is alive and well and made flesh in the next room. Ooops, as
they say. SOMEWHAT STRAINED So with both young ladies under the impression
they are both engaged to Ernest, who doesn't actually exists, relations
are somewhat strained when the pair sit down for that most gentile of
English upper-crust pastimes – tea. There was a priceless moment when Cecily is
happily loading up Gwendolen's cup with sugar lumps, after she has
told her, of course, that she does not take sugar – “it's not
fashionable any more”- and one accidentally fell on the floor. O'Hanrahan without a pause bent down, picked it
up with the tongs, looked at it mischievously for a moment, then popped
it in the cup along with the rest. You can't script quick wits like
that. Providing the tea, sandwiches and drinks is Giles
Taylor as the dapper servant Lane in London and the more elderly
retainer Merriman in the country (he was the manservant Bennett in
Travesties) and who skilfully managed to garner laughs with just
looks and pauses. Then we have Mrs Prism, the rather nervous
governess played by Abigail McKern (Nadya, Lenin's assistant in
Travesties) who holds the guilty secret of the handbag, the key to
the whole play. Watching her longingly is Roger Ringrose as the Rev
Canon Chasuble, (he was Lenin in Travesties) who would happily
meet Miss Prism round the back of the vestry given half the chance. He is on standby to Christen both Algernon
and Jack as born-again Ernests to give some credence to their
alter egos. There are still rocky moments for our happy
couples though with “passionate celibacy” on the cards until the deck
all fall into place and everyone is set to live happily ever after. The production uses the same, solid impressive
set as Travesties and relies heavily on Simon Bond's skilllful
lighting to change the scene from London flat to country garden to
country house. As long as Wilde's classic play finds productions
are as good as this one Ernest should continue to find importance in
being earnest for at least another 116 years. Roger Clarke Added surprise to the Wilde goings on ****
THIS classic Oscar Wilde comedy, full of twists and turns and improbable
situations, has an additional surprise which has nothing to do with the
author. Lady Bracknell, the
domineering aristocrat, and such a key figure in the story, is played by
a man! Don't ask me why, but Nick
Caldecott is certainly skilled in the role. He just about gets away with
it when using that haughty voice her ladyship had when addressing lesser
mortals, but it's difficult to forget that she/he is a guy, assuming you
have read the programme before curtain up. That aside, it is an
impressively staged production in which all the humour and mischief
Wilde created in the tale in which two male friends discover the
importance of being earnest (serious feeling or intention) and being
Earnest (the name two attractive young ladies target for their perfect
mate). Tom Davey (John Worthing) and
Matthew Douglas (Algernon Moncrieff) are impressive as the two toffs who
adopt other names as cover for various risky activities, and there are
delightful performances from Emily Bowker (Gwendolen) and Emerald
O'Hanrahan (Cecily). the girls they hope to marry. Amusing contributions, too,
from Giles Taylor, first playing Lane, the bright, youngish butler in
one home, then Merriman the doddery old servant in another. Directed by Philip Wilson, the
play - first performed in London in 1895 - runs in conjunction with Tom
Stoppard's Travesties. To 22.10.11 Paul
Marston The Importance of
Being Ernest marked the start of Wilde's spectacular fall from
grace in a story as tragic as an Victorian melodrama. The play opened in triumph and Wilde was the
supertsar of the age but neither he nor his adoring public realised that
this brilliant play was to be his last. What is widely regarded as his best play came at
a time when, at 41, he was at the peak of his literary powers. He was
the darling of society, a beacon in the literary and theatrical world,
with a glittering career stetching long into the twentieth century ahead
of him. Except for one snag; The Marques of Queensbury,
he of the boxing rules, who was furious about Wilde's relationship with
his son Lord Alfred Douglas, Wilde's Bosie. Queensbury had intended to present Wilde with a
basket of rotten fruit to create a scene to ruin opening night at the St
James' Theatre, but with the theatre forewarned Queensbury was refused
admission. Four days later Queensbury made his scene. He
left his calling card at Wilde's club, the Albermarle, with “For Oscar
Wilde posing somdomite” scrawled on it. The spelling might have been a
bit awry but the sentiment was clear and, as sodomy was a crime,
and he had accused Wilde of being a sodomite, Wilde, perhaps ill
advisably, sued for libel. Queensbury, who had employed a team of private
detectives, in turn produced a sordid picture of Wilde's rather
less public life including male prostitutes who claimed they had had
relations with Wilde. His lawyers advised him to withdraw his
prosecution. The costs bankrupted him and with Queensbury found not
guity and his claim Wilde was a sodomite justified a warrant was issued
for Wilde's arrrst. Friends urged him to flee the country but Wilde
prevaricated and was then arrested and subsequently found guilty of
gross indecency and jailed for two years hard labour. Wilde, a broken man, and social pariah left
England on his release and for a while lived with Bosie near Naples
until a separation was brought about by their respective families
threatening to cut off funds. Wilde was to die of cerebral meningitis in a
fleapit of a Paris hotel in 1900 aged just 46. His legacy after The
Importance of being Earnest was a long 50,000 word letter to Lord Alfred
Douglas, De Profundis
(From the Depths) and The Ballad of
Reading Goal, published originally in the name of c.3.3., his
number as a prisoner - cell block C, landing three, cell three. We will never know what
was lost to the world by the intolerance of the society Wilde lived in,
what he may have written, but The Importance of Being Earnest
remains one of the best known and best loved plays in the theatres. His grave in the
Pere Lachaise Cemetery,
Paris bears an epitaph taken from
The Ballad of Reading Goal, And alien
tears will fill for him, Pity's long-broken urn, For his
mourners will be outcast men, And
outcasts always mourn.
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