THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST. To 7 August.
Manchester
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST
by Oscar Wilde
Royal Exchange Theatre To 7 August 2004
Mon-Fri 7.30pm Sat 8pm Mat Wed 2.30pm Sat 4pm
Audio-described 10 July 4pm
Post-show discussion 15 July
Runs 2hr 35min Two intervals
TICKETS: 0161 833 9833
boxoffice@royalexchange.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 28 June
A light and elegant Earnest, straight and satisfying.The impositions directors - and particularly designers - have heaped on Wilde's comedy over recent years, merely prove how perfect a piece of theatre it is. Interference merely produces disproportion. It's a major achievement of Braham Murray's revival that it shows plenty of work from director and designer illuminating, rather than submerging, the script.
From the start, this is a serious play about trivial people, not wit-mouthing plot marionettes. Jamie de Courcey's Algernon clearly thinks out some of his sayings (and in act three his Aunt Augusta reduces this master of improvisation and social poise to an extraordinary degree of stuttering). His portrait, presenting him as a flaxen-haired Byronic youth, stands prominently in his room, indicating someone with a strong self-image.
The contrast with Ian Shaw's John Worthing is excellent, Shaw dark with neat-brushed hair and tidy moustache, making his later expostulations, with their touch of John Cleese turning manic, the funnier. And the contrast's clearly, fully character-based.
As it is with the two young women, Anna Hewson's Gwendolen all town-sophistication, making maximum point with minimum movement or flickers of expression. Social command's bred in her.
By contrast, Laura Rees's Cecily is country-bred, an assertive young woman discovering how to exploit her sexuality, which is ripping free from the constraints of Miss Prism's lessons in her diary. Her long flowing hair and genteel Alice-in-Wonderland dress suggest apolite childhood belied by her impulsive, assertive moves and the exaggerated looks of shock on her face, suggesting instinctive calculation.
This sense of contrast extends to John Conroy's double servant-act, all smart, erect preparedness as the London Lane, crumpling into the distinctly unspruce rural Merriman. Though even he displays a servant's practiced cunning in avoiding trouble by swiftly offloading the tea things so unwelcome to Gwendolen.
Then there's that part. Gabrielle Darke's Lady B. is no gorgon.Young and distinctly glamorous for her generation, she's evidently still an active part of the society she comments on, bound by rather than ruling it.
Her permission to let Jack sit in her presence before beginning her eligibility questionnaire is an invitation rather than command; even the famous response to his having lost both parents is almost a sign of acceptance - closer to complicit joke than reproof.
It's only after the smile has become more glacially detached from her mind, on "The (railway) line is immaterial" that naked aggression shouts through her assumed manner.
This is the dialogue's natural period (Edith Evans hijacked it with her "handbag") but the sudden shout - a self-revelation shared on one occasion each by the younger women - is a rare example of obvious 'direction' in the Exchange production.
Generally, Murray, aided by Johanna Bryant's elegant settings with their pointedly gothic decoration exterior and interior in dowdy old Hertfordshire, has produced an intelligent, highly amusing production that's much more than mere summer eve's fodder.
Lane/Merriman: John Conroy
Algernon Moncrieff: Jamie de Courcey
John Worthing JP: Ian Shaw
Lady Bracknell: Gabrielle Drake
Gwendolen Fairfax: Anna Hewson
Miss Prism: Joanna David
Cecily Cardew: Laura Rees
Rev Canon Chasuble: John Watts
Director: Braham Murray
Designer: Johanna Bryant
Lighting: Jason Taylor
Sound: Pete Rice
2004-06-29 14:25:33