Oscar Wilde in an interview just before the premiere in 1895 said that audiences were to expect a delicious bubble of fancy, which had a philosophy and that was that we should treat the trivial things of life very seriously and the serious things of life with sincere and studied triviality.
There isn’t a topic Oscar doesn’t touch: social etiquette, politics, food, music, servants, celibacy, romantic love, proposals, marriage, parenthood, unmarried mothers, abandoned babies, the three-volume novel, girls’ diaries, education, Germans, Australians, baptism, death, mourning, even burial in Paris
The Importance of Being Earnest is the wittiest comedy in the language. As Oscar Wilde himself said just prior to the original opening, ‘The play is a success. The only question is whether the first night’s audience will be one.’
Denzel Westley-Sanderson directs an all-black production. The two young men who lead double lives are played by Abiola Owokonira and Justice Richie and they are very likeable and very good, totally confident with Wilde’s witty dialogue and epigrams.
Daniel Jacob, AKA drag queen Vinegar Strokes, is a formidable cartoon comic Lady Bracknell. The major fault of the production is that there is far too much hysterical acting and shouting. This fault could easily be corrected.
The play is the quintessence of Wilde: a trivial comedy for serious people, which has to be played with a lightness of touch and a gravity of purpose, if the brilliant mixture of elegant sophistication and preposterous nonsense is to be done full justice.
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