The Importance of Being Earnest

Sale & Altrincham Messenger's Review

'Full of charm'

By Julia Taylor
****

One of the most famous lines in the history of British theatre consists of just two words - "a handbag!" They are spoken in Oscar Wilde's comedy, The Importance of Being Earnest at the Garrick this week. You can often judge the quality of a play by the way these words are spoken. They are uttered when Lady Bracknell discovers that her prospective son-in-law, Jack, was found as a baby in a handbag at a railway station. The words first became famous when Dame Edith Evans spoke them in the 1952 film. In this version, Alison Davis's booming, throaty, upper-class voice make her the ideal person for the overpowering part. She gets the intonation of those two words right even though they are nothing like Dame Edith's.

The rest of the cast successfully capture the style and feel of the upper-class in-crowd who are constantly trying to be other people instead of being true to themselves. The play is so full of charm that it doesn't really matter that it has a flimsy plot and light weight characters. The storyline hangs on a thread. Jack becomes Ernest to capture the heart of Gwendolyn and Algernon also becomes Ernest because of his love for Cecily.

The dialogue is pure, late nineteenth century banter full of irresistible one liners. I am so glad director, Barry Purves sticks to Wilde's script as used at the premier at the St. James Theatre, London, in 1895. I have seen versions of this play where it has been updated and, as a consequence, completely ruined.

Phil Duncan is an ever so far back Algernon Moncrieff. His switch to becoming Ernest, the imaginary brother of Jack Worthing, (the one found in the handbag) is doubly amusing. Jack becomes the pivot around whom everyone else revolves thanks to a sterling performance by John Keen. Paula Keen and Sinead Parker as Gwendolen Fairfax and Cecily Cardew sail through the amusingly indignant repartee that results when they mistakenly believe they are both engaged to the same man (naturally called Ernest!). There is even a fracas with a knife - if only a cake knife!

Thanks not just to the cast but to the costume department, the Garrick successfully capture frivolity, snobbishness and humour amid the cucumber sandwiches and the audience love it.

 

Sale & Altrincham Messenger's Preview

Anyone for a Wilde night out?

By Rick Bowen

SCRATCH the surface of The Importance of Being Earnest and you discover what the play is really about. That's the message from Barry Purves who is directing Oscar Wilde's much loved comedy for Altrincham Garrick.

"People think of The Importance of Being Earnest as being about cucumber sandwiches but there's something very, very substantial going on underneath. Bearing in mind Wilde's own life and the tragic consequences of not being able to express himself properly, some of that is in his play," he says, referring to the fact the great man was sentenced to two years hard labour as a result of his homosexuality.

The scandal caused a sensation in Victorian England - homosexuality would remain illegal for more than six decades in this country. But some would argue, myself included, that the real scandal was that the man who'd brought us some of the greatest works in English literature left jail peniless. Three years after being released he was dead.

You can always expect something different from Barry's productions and he promises an energetic evening for Trafford's theatregoers. "Also, what I want to bring out is Wilde's obsession with how everyone has a facade. In all his plays there's always two sides to people and in this play, people are pretending to be earnest and they're pretending to be other people the whole time. That's what's relevant today - about being true to yourself," he says.

If ever we needed an Oscar Wilde among us it is now and Barry actually believes we have one in the shape of the actor/presenter Stephen Fry, who brought the Irish wit so engagingly and memorably to life on the big screen. "Stephen Fry is Oscar Wilde today - that man is a genius. I love anyone who can communicate with words in such long sentences," he says.