The Importance of Being Earnest review

Three scene-stealers make this a comedy cracker

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Max Webster’s production of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest felt like a sugary overload of a festive banquet when it ran for a sell-out season at the National Theatre last year – jubilant and cackle-worthy but sprawling in places. Now blithely skipping across the Thames to the Noël Coward Theatre, the take on Wilde’s play about confused identities, deceptions, romances and, of course, handbags, feels tighter, slicker and funnier. A heady shot of a sweet liqueur to help us escape these trying times.

Part of the success has to come down to Webster’s direction – deftly mining Wilde’s text for the comic opportunities and rattling along at a necessarily chipper pace, laced with lashings of queer fun.

The flamboyant anachronisms peppered throughout the 2024 version remain, but are less jarring and much more at home in a venue that sits as a close sibling to the revue halls of old, one that spent its early years playing host to the works of Noël Coward, P G Wodehouse and more. It’s hard to guess what Oscar Wilde would make of an unscripted “wagwan” aside, but the audience on press night were lapping it up. A meta-theatrical joke about covering a scene change was another particular highlight.

As is far too infrequently done, some credit has to be granted to casting director Alastair Coomer, assembling a brand new company without any holdovers from the National run. Leading the charge are It’s A Sin star Olly Alexander and Misfits’ Nathan Stewart-Jarrett as the flamboyant Algernon and skittish Jack respectively – Alexander returning to the stage with a blasé pomp that fits Wilde’s text like a glove, and where Stewart-Jarrett may not have had the same haphazard foppishness that worked well for Hugh Skinner at the National, he keeps the show’s tempo at a blazing speed that contributes to the giddy euphoria of the final lines.

All that said – there are three performers that steal the show. The first two of these are Kitty Hawthorne as Gwendolen and Jessica Whitehurst as Cecily – turning passive aggression into an artform in their crucial scene at the end of act one – trading veiled insults faster than frantic stockbrokers on Wall Street. Whitehurst was a stand-out presence in Virginia Gay’s Cyrano last year – it’s excellent to see her now holding a West End audience in the palm of her hand. The third of these is truly Webster’s secret weapon in this production: Told by an Idiot co-founder and stage legend Hayley Carmichael in the dual roles of manservants Lane and Merriman, turning bit parts into side-splitting comedic beats that lighten every scene.

There are some solid supporting turns from Hugh Dennis as the Reverend and Shobna Gulati as Miss Prism, while one of the big star draws, Stephen Fry, is an understated yet poised Lady Bracknell, in some ways reminiscent of the award-winning work done by Jak Malone as Hester in Operation Mincemeat. While perhaps not oozing the same charisma that Sharon D Clarke supplied at the National, his delivery of the iconic “handbag” line comes like an aghast outburst – punters were pleased as punch.

As you can expect from a National show, the lavishness of Rae Smith’s set and costume designs remain largely unchanged and remain equally effective. There’s typically top-notch work from lighting designer Jon Clark, sound designer Nicola T Chang and composer D J Walde. Last Christmas, the production felt like Wilde-as-panto: this autumn it’s a sure-fire comedy cracker for all seasons.

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