Would an Earnest by any other name still be as eligible? Apparently not, according to the myopic affections of Gwendolen Fairfax (Megan Wilding) and Cecily Cardew (Melissa Kahraman), the two fickle bachelorettes with a rather specific kink for names at the heart of Oscar Wilde’s ‘trivial comedy for serious people’. And they aren’t the only puddle-deep paramours in this genteel world of afternoon tea and alter egos. Algernon Moncrieff (Charles Wu) and John Worthing (Brandon McClelland) are equally shallow in their wants, creating phony personas that allow them to save face in polite society while living it up on the side. The imperiously pompous Lady Bracknell (Helen Thomson) sums it up most succinctly: “We live, I regret to say, in an age of surfaces.” Who needs scruples, genuine or otherwise, when you look the part (and have the right name)?
In James Gillray’s satirical cartoons of the early 1800s, the upper classes he so vividly lampooned literally embodied their elite excesses – gorged bellies, gaudy fashions and features warped into avian extremes. Later that same century, Wilde would unleash his own withering commentary on the gentry through the written word, but director Sarah Giles seems to have taken a leaf from Gillary’s book to amplify the wit and wisdom of Wilde’s final and most popular comedy.
This is slapstick with all the wit and subtly of Wilde’s razor-edged one liners, neither word nor action sparring for attention, but rather working together in harmony.
In fact, physical comedy is so essential to this Sydney Theatre Company production, it could make a Wilde purist wince – why, after all, do you need any such clowning when hilarity already abounds in the text? And yet, they're so fine tuned, so carefully calibrated, that these physical flourishes never overpower. This is slapstick with all the wit and subtly of Wilde’s razor-edged one liners, neither word nor action sparring for attention, but rather working together in harmony.
It’s a brilliant gambit that offers new comedic opportunities to even the smallest of roles – the slithering stealth of Worthing’s butler, delivered by Gareth Davis, a case in point. Even when Giles decides to turn up the volume – such as a ridiculous flower-bed scuffle that closes the first act – the choice feels considered, balanced and entirely in service to Wilde. As a fabulously haughty Gwendolen, Wilding steals the show with the microscopic finesse of her timing, earning guffaws with the flick of an eyebrow or the narrowing of a glance, while both McClelland and Thomson provide the ballast for all this silliness, with a Worthing and Lady Bracknell that stick more closely to Wildien restraint.
The set and costumes play with a similar counterpoint between the traditional and the absurd. Against the opulent yet colour-sapped backdrop of a Victorian parlour, designed by Charles Davis, Renée Mulder’s eye-popping costumes pack a wallop. This Victorian-couture-on-acid aesthetic adds yet another layer to Wilde’s commentary on the too-much-is-never-enough appetites of the upper classes, as well as creating a few wukka-wukkas on the way – I could literally watch Wilding attempting to climb some steps in a fishtail gown on repeat forever and die a happy man.
It’s a hugely entertaining production, but perhaps to a fault. While it’s true that the genesis of this play was at a producer’s request for a story “with no real serious interest”, it’s a credit to Wilde’s brilliance that this apparently throw-away farce should provide such an incisive dissection of the meaningless troubles of the ‘haves’, while the ‘have nots’ struggle to survive. Giles attempts to underline this with a side-by-side upstairs-downstairs stage picture, where suicidal underlings scurry about in the dank dark. It’s a worthy attempt to stir up some of the subversiveness Wilde so delighted in, and yet this parallel existence feels like it belongs in a different world – not a glimpse at a stark reality, but an equally pantomimish Dickensian brand of Victoriana that fails to gel with an otherwise astute and innovative vision.
The Importance of Being Earnest plays at the Roslyn Packer Theatre, Walsh Bay, from September 5 to October 14. Tickets range from $65-$123 and you can get yours over here.
