Oscar would’ve loved it! And we did too. Having seen or read this play so very many times, I expected to enjoy it, but not to be in absolute hysterics throughout. Max Webster’s direction and the incredible cast delivered a performance that for me is unmatched. Wilde’s tale of entangled double lives, money, desire and connivance was delivered in extravagant and raunchy style. All levels of this story, at once superficial and profound, were explored and the result was a mad and earthy delight.
I loved the boldness of the direction and acting, which have usurped my previous favourite version. This was the 1993 staging at the Aldwych, when Maggie Smith delivered the handbag line with such mild, quizzical disbelief, almost a sympathetic whisper. And her pronunciation of “profile” as “profeel” and her slight hesitation over the line ‘he is an … Oxonian’. Such undertones!
There were very few unexplored undertones in the energetic burlesque at the Noël Coward. The play was explicit in every dimension from Stephen Fry’s Lady Bracknell’s shrieking of the handbag line, through to Kitty Hawthorne’s Gwendoline’s lust filled gestures and delivery.
What made this such an outstanding rendition of an already funny play? Wilde called this, his last of four so-called drawing room plays, ‘A Trivial Comedy for Serious People’. And on the page you can find all sorts of seriousness: being sexually frustrated, broke, poor, unloved. There’s old age and loneliness, guilt, deception, and hypocrisy. On stage such frailties make us laugh, but rarely do we see or laught at explicit sexual frustration and ambivalence. Until now.
It is the outstanding Kitty Hawthorne playing Gwendolen Fairfax who sets this tone from the start. She almost, but not quite, steals the show. At once bossy and demanding and charming – how she manages this I have no idea – you at once dread what she’ll say and do next and eagerly anticipate it’s impact on her fellow players. Sometimes she’s growling and lascivious and sometimes prim and bossy. Priceless. Coming hot on Kitty Hawthorne’s heels is Hayley Carmichael’s Merriman/Lane performance. This too almost, but not quite, upstaged the rest of the cast. Her Lane was at once aloof, nonchalant and disrespectful, and her confused and slightly demented Merriman has surely never exhibited such enormous personality. Hysterical and transfixing.
Back to Kitty Hawthorne, played loud and determined, her Gwendolen is the perfect harbinger of her older self (yes, like her mother Lady Bracknell). She’s determined to have a man called Earnest, and Jack is the perfect choice: she’s fallen in love on hearsay, with an idea, with a suitable candidate she has decided will meet her needs. That he’s a liar and broke is irrelevant. She wants Algernon Moncrieff even more once she lays eyes on him. Her frantic use of a fan to cool her face and thighs as she nearly snarled the lines that the name Earnest ‘produces vibrations’ and ‘I am fully determined to accept you’ brought the joyous tears streaming.
Wilde and sex have always been equated on his personal level, but not so much in his plays. But in this performance sex is as important as earnestness; maybe it is earnestness. It’s wonderful to see Wilde’s work taken out of the society comedy box and put on as portrayal of how people might actually feel about one another. The only gripe I have with the presentation of sexuality is the few lesbian interactions in the stage direction. There is no need to show us Cecily and Gwendoline licking at one another – it’s already there in the lines: ‘I already like you more than I can say’ et al. The incidences of gratuitous lesbian posturing were a completely unnecessary distraction that went absolutely nowhere. They can be done without.
I have always wondered why it is that the two young women in this play are often played as much the same character, when on the page they are immensely different. Jessica Whitehurst’s Cecily Cardew is spoilt, loud and clear and not just a bit of ballast for the plot. She’s naughty and wayward and Whitehurst brings a wonderful unpredictability to the role. Jessica Whitehurst gives us a Cecily Cardew of a much more distinct character. She’s also sexually ambitious, holding onto Algernon tight and leering at him when other characters are speaking. So funny.
Olly Alexander is, for me at least, an unexpected delight as Algernon Moncrieff. He balances campy skittishness with almost drooling desire to perfection. Nathan Stewart-Jarrett’s Jack Worthing brings a bizarre underlying neurosis to the part, alternatively wanting to be in control and stressing at the tension of it all. Stephen Fry is nothing short of monumental as Lady Bracknell. Tightly upholstered she is hugely present, without conquering all before her. Everyone gets to shine and each player really does own it: Shobna Gulati’s Miss Prism and Hugh Dennis as Reverend Canon Chasuble create a subplay all their own. Another rendition the sex theme, this time for older people, is visible in their understated mutual attraction. Their interactions are devoid of anything like carnality or lust. But they are touchingly infused with longing and tenderness and the hint that such feelings are probably a first for both of them.
Both the play’s opening prologue scene and the closing one were musical performances involving lots of noise, dancing and the whole cast. Drastically different, they provided an introduction the players and then gave the audience an utterly wild and unconventional encore. Everyone was dressed as a giant lily or suchlike, the diameters of which varied with the scope of the actors’ parts. The spectacular costumes for the finale echoed the joyful vibrancy, timeliness and currency of both the performance and Wilde’s play. His words resonate still as do his perceptive insights for his own and our own times. His understanding of our frailties, our vanities, wants and desires is as astute today as when the original production was staged in February 1895. Director Max Webster told The Stage magazine last October that he wants to make work that “speaks to as many people as possible”. At the intimate Noël Coward Theatre, the perfect venue for this most perfect of plays, he has succeeded admirably.
