The Importance of Being Earnest: Oscar Wilde classic given 'fizzing' update at the National Theatre

The cast of The Importance of Being Earnest

A production that brings a '21st century playfulness' to Wilde's text

(Image credit: Marc Brenner)

published 5 December 2024

"Think of it as an adult panto," said Clive Davis in The Times. Director Max Webster has given Oscar Wilde's classic comedy a "bold and brash" reboot, and it has an awful lot going for it.

There's some "comic acting of the highest order", from Hugh Skinner as an anxious Jack, and from Sharon D. Clarke as a Caribbean-accented Lady Bracknell. And Ncuti Gatwa (of "Doctor Who" fame) is charming as the "preening sybarite" Algernon – "tossing off witticisms as if they're going out of fashion", said Nick Curtis in The London Standard. Traditionalists might not love the production, with its camp, almost knockabout humour and "'Bridgerton'-style colourblind casting". But I found it "fizzing", fascinating and fun.

This 1895 play's "subtext of homoerotic desire" has been mined before, said Arifa Akbar in The Guardian. But not like this; we've not seen "Algernon whirling onto the stage in a hot pink gown, like Marilyn Monroe on acid, or Earnest camping it up with hand on hip". And Algernon's "Bunburyism" (the deception that allows him to adopt a double life) has "never sounded more like a sexual double entendre". This is a lavish production with gorgeous costumes and pop culture references, but which strikes a well-judged balance between "fidelity to Wilde's text and 21st-century playfulness". You feel Wilde himself would be thrilled by all the mischief and misbehaviour on display, even if it is "subversion-lite": the "same-sex gropes and innuendoes don't seem to belong to the characters but are simply there, frothily transgressive rather than sharply satirical".