Doctor Who helps give Oscar Wilde’s national treasure a witty reboot: PATRICK MARMION reviews The Importance of Being Earnest

The Importance of Being Earnest (Lytteleton, National Theatre, London)

Verdict: Love Earnest

Rating:

Amazingly, this is only the second time the National Theater has staged Oscar Wilde’s famous ‘trivial comedy for serious people’. Before this, it was more than four decades ago, in 1982, when Judi Dench took her cushioned seat as Lady ‘a handbag!?’ Bracknell, directed by Peter Hall.

Perhaps what deters producers is the play’s formidable quotability. Its nearly three-hour duration can feel like a recitation from the Oxford Dictionary Of Quotations, thanks to lines that range from ‘the truth is rarely pure and never simple’ to the dizzying ‘the suspense is terrible, I hope it will last’.

The challenge for any director, then, is how to free the play from the moorings of its Victorian deja-vu superstatus and let it breathe. And to his credit, Max Webster has done just that with a sparkling new production.

There’s so much casting, and what casting: with Doctor Who’s Ncuti Gatwa and Fleabag’s Hugh Skinner lining up ahead of Sharon D. Clarke, as formidable Jamaican battleaxe Lady Bracknell, who appears to be from the colonies and sports multiple decorations on her chest than a field marshal.

Webster frames the story as a gay pride event and offers a drag queen parade as prologue and curtain call. Although we occasionally hear Dr Dre playing the piano, this is a brightly colored – almost traditional – production that is fiercely faithful to Wilde’s viciously subversive spirit.

Gatwa is a gloriously unabashed tease as ‘presentationally entitled’ Algernon, who follows his friend Jack Worthington to the country in search of marriage and mischief.

Jack, now posh, was a foundling, discovered as a baby in a handbag at Victoria Station, and must secure approval from Lady B to marry his beloved Gwendolen (Ronke Adekoluejo).

All, however, openly argue their sexuality; and the consequences are very high spirits within a ground as tightly structured as a German railway timetable.

In-jokes and ad-libbing (including a nod to East End queer venue Dalston Superstore) aside, Webster’s production focuses on Wilde’s narrative twists. He reminds us that it is not only a play with great lines, but also great roles.

True to Wilde’s prescription, Gatwa is deliciously self-satisfied and brings boyish charm to Algernon, bouncing on and off the stage in fabulously silly suits.

Skinner’s Jack, meanwhile, has a feverish repertoire of anxious smiles and chaotic frowns beneath his wavy mop top.

And the ladies are up to their own tricks, with Gwendolen stringing Jack along to get his hands on his early ward Cecily (Eliza Scanlen), who has ‘fallen into the habit of thinking for herself’.

Led by Julian Bleach’s servant, they interrupt the proceedings with ever-larger gongs.

Yes, liberties have been taken. But it is surely the best way to blow the dust off this national treasure. Also, set designer and costume designer Rae Smith gives us eye-popping spectacles: a creamy Mayfair living room, a country garden, a spacious library in a stately home.

Unsurprisingly, most performances are sold out despite the subsidized theatre’s £110 ticket price for a stall seat.

But you can catch it in cinemas from February 20 – and who knows, maybe even in the West End after that?

Until January 25.

Three Musketeers, two high energy hits

The Three Musketeers (New Vic Theatre, Newcastle-under-Lyme)

Rating:

My kids often roll their eyes and say, ‘Dad, it’s not that deep.’ But I am determined to celebrate Christmas in December. No mince pie must pass my lips until Sunday. And, inspired by Scrooge, I will also postpone the theatrical surge of Dickens’ Christmas carols until then.

I was therefore delighted to find two high-energy versions of The Three Musketeers, in Staffs and Gloucs.

Newcastle-under-Lyme has a particularly fine rendering as Alexandre Dumas’s Parisian swordsmen are joined by country bumpkin D’Artagnan and caught up in a sinister plot surrounding the French queen’s necklace.

Theresa Heskins’ brisk adaptation thrilled its target audience of elementary school kids when I caught it—thanks, in particular, to Lemar Moller’s amiable D’Artagnan.

Some acts could be more clever, but it’s action-packed with tumultuous sword fights choreographed by Philip d’Orleans.

The characters are drawn with deft flashes of steel – Hadley Smith’s dandy Porthos, Thomas Dennis’s tasty Aramis and Louis J. Rhone’s sharp Athos.

There is a good distance between the maid Constance (Chloe Ragrag) and the spy Milady (Charlotte Price), while Perry Moore’s consonants as the intruding cardinal are colder and more cutting than the knives.

The Three Musketeers (Barn Theatre, Cirencester)

Rating:

The Swordsmen of Cirencester also entertain, but more in the form of a student review, with the heroes forming a 17th century boy band.

In a show with costumes designed by Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen and upbeat songs by Lee Freeman and Mark Anderson, ‘D’Arty’ (George Shuter) comes to Paris to avenge his musketeer father and gets caught up in another necklace scam.

Shuter is an amiably naïve D’Arty alongside love interest Conny (Hayley Canham). But strangely, he and the Musketeers use spray cans instead of swords, and are more distinguished by LLB’s costumes than derring-do.

Still, the young cast sing, dance and play multiple instruments in a brilliant, seasonal (grr), audiovisual romp. Touche!

Donizetti meets Dad’s Army in ENO’s new Elixir Of Love

By Tully Potter

The Elixir of Love (English National Opera)

Verdict: We’re in strange territory…

Rating:

Don’t tell him, Pike, but there’s something very rum going on: they’ve set a classic 19th-century Italian comedy in England during the Second World War. But that’s okay – I think I caught a glimpse or two of the sharing among the khaki-clad types.

The problem with your humble writer is that he has seen this little masterpiece done properly since 1956. And the problem with Harry Fehr’s production is that you keep expecting Dad’s Army to show up.

Welsh soprano Rhian Lois as Adina is like a cross between Mrs Fox and Mrs Pike and New Zealander Thomas Atkins, as Nemorino looks so English he could pass for Pike if he wasn’t in a mufti. Presumably, as a farmer, he is in a ‘reserved profession’.

Making Belcore an RAF wing commander misses the whole point about him being a brash plebeian army sergeant. And the priest is more papa’s army than the Italian notary of the original.

With quack Doctor Dulcamara with a Yank accent, we are in strange territory indeed.

Then there is the translation by the late Amanda Holden (not that one). You can amuse yourself by watching the subtitles to see what clichéd line endings she mined from the online RhymeZone. If ‘pleasure’ comes, ‘treasure’ is bound to follow.

Somewhere along the line, a precious pastoral pleasure (and treasure) of two geniuses slips down the cracks, ending up as neither Gilbert & Sullivan nor Donizetti & Romani, but a kind of wartime canned macaroni.

This is a tenor opera and Atkins sings sweetly, especially in his big aria in Act 2; but both he and Lois, whirring with a will, could improve the purity of their vowels: ‘money’ comes out as ‘marney’ and ‘suffering’ as ‘sarfering’.

Dan D’Souza as Belcore and Brandon Cedel as Dulcamara sing decently enough, although neither is particularly funny – the latter’s best joke is torpedoed by the translator.

Teresa Riveiro Bohm conducts with brio and both choir and orchestra (a nice solo bassoon) are fine.

Now here’s an idea: instead of duplicating the Royal Opera’s efforts, why doesn’t the ENO give us some of the works from this era written in English – The Bohemian Girl, The Lily Of Killarney or Maritana?