At the National Theatre last Christmas, Max Webster’s vividly queer take on Oscar Wilde’s magnum opus felt quite a lot like The Ncuti Gatwa Show. Back on stage for the first time since he hit the big time, the Doctor Who actor’s stupendously arch take on dashing young protagonist Algernon Montcrieff had an ultra-knowing quality that defined the production.
It’s very, very obvious that in Webster’s take, Algenon and his cousin-slash-BFF Jack are meant to be closeted gay men (it begins with a dragged up Algie writhing away at a grand piano, and doesn’t get noticiably straighter). But whereas Gatwa’s sardonically adult interpretation of Algernon seemed very aware of his own sexuality, that’s not necessarily the case in the West End cast. Gatwa’s replacement is fellow Russell T Davies alumnus Ollie Alexander, and he plays Algie with a waspish dandyishness that feels childish, not adult, a little boy roleplaying his whirlwind romance with Jessica Whitehurst’s bolshy Cicily. Likewise, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett‘s Jack is basically a gigantic overgrown puppy, wagging his tail in delight at the attentions of Kitty Hawthorn’s Gwendolyn, but with zero sexual intent.
All four ‘lovers’ go about their relationships with the breezy silliness of a group of primary schoolers playing mummies and daddies. Webster’s interpretation amps up Wilde’s wit by unburdening it of any need for us to believe in the romance. Indeed, the contrived plotting – Bunburying, the women only being into guys called Earnest, the whole handbag thing – makes more sense if viewed as role play by a group of people who are strangers to their own sexualities.
You don’t need to think too deeply about any of this, but my point is that Webster explicitly asks us to view Earnest as a queer text and refuses to take the romance, well, earnestly. Okay, it was always an allegory for closeted Victorian society and the social allure of heteronormativity. But this version is fun because it throws off any pretence otherwise.
Rae Smith’s sets remain things of vivid wonder, a series of hallucinogenic, lysergically bright wonderlands that look hyperreal, not actually real. Adding to the atmosphere of artifice is the use of cross dressing in the transfer cast. Where Sharon D Clarke’s shrewd Caribbean Lady Bracknell somewhat grounded the previous incarnation, Stephen Fry plays her as a loopy old dear whose presence only makes things weirder. Fry’s performance is rather gentle, all things told, but there’s something about the mere fact of his being there – probably the most famous gay actor in the country – that adds to the general sense that we’ve fallen into some bizarre, Narnia-like closet.
The whole ensemble is allowed to breathe a bit more than when Gatwa was the focal point. Alexander is more of a team player, with a genuinely enjoyable double act between his bitchy Algenon and Stewart-Jarrett’s terminally straightforward Jack. And an unexpected MVP is allowed to sneak through. In the second piece of cross dressing, Hayley Carmichael (of physical theatre oddballs Told By An Idiot) is absolutely sublime in the dual roles of Algenon’s inscrutable butler Lane and Cicily’s doddery old servant Merriman: on press night she got an instant standing ovation, which is quite something for a supporting part.
Webster undoubtedly breaks Wilde’s play, by hauling the subtext up to the surface, and basically yelling THEY’RE GAY at us over and over. But whether you want to look for deeper meaning in the production’s every quirk or simply treat it as a funny, fresh, irreverent way of tackling a comedy that has become mired in sexually repressed cliche, well, that’s entirely up to you.
