Robert Tanitch reviews The Importance of Being Earnest at Barbican Theatre, London EC2
Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, a brilliant mixture of elegant sophistication and preposterous nonsense, is perfect. There is no need whatsoever to mess about with it.
Wilde described it as “an exquisitely trivial, a delicate bubble of fantasy.” Gerald Barry’s opera in this ROH production is certainly no delicate bubble.
I feared I would hate it. Instead I found it great fun. The play has been severely cut but a good deal of Wilde’s wit remains to amuse the audience.
There have been to my knowledge at least 17 musicals based on The Importance. None of them has had an afterlife. There have been operas of Wilde’s other works. But up till now there has been only one opera of The Importance.
Singers and orchestra are on stage. The opera begins in the dark with a terrible noise.
“Did you hear what I was playing? asks Algernon (Benedict Nelson).
“I didn’t think polite to listen, sir,” replies his manservant, Lane (Simon Wilding).
The music (conducted by Tim Murray and played by Britten Sinfonia with loud, rampaging energy) is manic, zany and quite surreal.
Barry constantly makes a witty commentary on Wilde’s text as when Gwendolen complains there is very little music in the name “Jack” and when John Worthing goes in search of his handbag.
Wilde labelled his play “a serious comedy for trivial people.” Barry’s music and libretto and Ramin Gray’s modern dress production, with Lady Bracknell played by a man in a suit, is enormously trivial. The singers are up to the challenge as both singers and actors.
One of the most enjoyable moments is the silly dance Lady Bracknell (Alan Ewing) and John Worthing (Paul Curievici) do during the interview. Lady Bracknell and Miss Prism (Hilary Summers) are liable to start speaking in German. Lady B in Act 3 sounds like Hitler addressing one of his rallies.
Gwendolen (Stephanie Marshall) and Cecily (Claudia Boyle) address each other with megaphones to the accompaniment of the breaking of 40 dinner plates.
I should now like to see Barry’s opera performed in the Victorian period. There is in fact already an Irish production by Anthony McDonald’s set in Victorian times which has been seen in Belfast and Dublin but not in England.
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