I’ve never seen Oscar Wilde’s 1895 play The Importance of Being Earnest (or to give it its full title: The Importance of Being Earnest, a Trivial Comedy for Serious People) and like a lot of people, the only thing I knew about it was Lady Bracknell’s elongated cry of “A Haaandbag”. So when I queued up at the bag-check (what are they looking for?!), I was hoping they would ask to check people’s Haaaandbags, but alas, they missed the opportunity and sullenly peered into bags looking for whatever. However, my assumption about the importance of said bag was reinforced when, before the play began, a large bag was hanging in front of the stage curtain. When it did rise, we saw Olly Alexander in a hot pink ball gown playing a grand piano surrounded by the cast dressed in black, some in drag – both male and female – a first it looked like something from Dante’s Nine Circle’s Of Hell (lust?) before the set was transformed into the luxurious drawing room belonging to Algernon Moncrieff (Olly Alexander) and National theatre’s production which has transferred just across the river to the Noël Coward Theatre, was up and running.
Completely re-cast, but still directed by Max Webster, in this production, the aforementioned Lady Bracknell is none other than Stephen Fry — a man who was surely born clutching a teacup and a barbed bon mot. Towering over the rest of the cast and dressed like an uprooted Victorian furniture showroom, Fry doesn’t so much play Bracknell as embody her, rolling Wilde’s legendary zingers around his mouth like they were artisanal olives. He’s majestic, terrifying, and only mildly haunted by the ghost of Noël Coward himself.
The production is still an absolute fever dream of campy brilliance. Rae Smith’s wonderfully luxurious sets look like Oscar Wilde’s imagination exploded in a haberdashery — elegant drawing rooms, manicured gardens, and an entire aesthetic held together by corsets, cravats, and sheer nerve. As for Smith’s costumes – imagine Victorian fashion being mugged by a drag show. They’re not just stylish but full-on fabulous and mouth-wateringly elegant.
Alexander as Algernon, who is camp as Christmas brings mischief, sparkle, and an irresistible sense that he knows we’re all in on the joke. Nathan Stewart-Jarrett’s Jack, his foil in both love and fake identity, plays the role with a sincerity that somehow survives the surrounding camp tornado. Kitty Hawthorne (Gwendolen) and Jessica Whitehurst (Cecily) are gloriously self-aware schemers who, whilst prototype feminists, can’t wait to get engaged. Hugh Dennis is a delight as the skittish Reverend Canon Chasuble, while Shobna Gulati brings a delightful idiocy to Miss Prism, Cecily’s tutor. However, the show is stolen by Hayley Carmichael, who gives a bone-dry masterclass in physical comedy as both butlers, Lane and Merriman — the latter seemingly 900 years old and fuelled by dust and spit and unable to find the way out, or in for that matter.
This production gets Wilde’s obsession with identity and double lives and gleefully tosses it into a sequined blender. It’s a romantic comedy, but one where the romance is stylized and the comedy is served with a side of interpretive voguing. There’s defiance here — a nod to Wilde’s own coded double life, now uncoded, uncaged, and sashaying across the stage. At times, the campness takes over, and whilst all ends happily with the coming together of Jack and Cecily and Algernon and Gwendolen, at times it looks as if it was Algernon and Jack who were going to float off into the sunset as a couple.
Like the unusual opening, the curtain call completes the framing of Wilde’s play, although I’m not sure he would have conceived either. The cast then reappear dressed in the kind of costumes you’d expect at the end of the campest, most elaborate panto (London Palladium, eat your heart out) with a breath-taking, vision-filling cacophony of colour and retina-burning splendour.
I’m not sure what Wilde would have thought of this production, so as I passed Maggi Hambling’s coffin-like memorial to the great man on my way to Charing Cross station, I gave his head a rub and told him he could rest easy, as once again he was the toast of the West End.
Review by Alan Fitter
CAST
Olly Alexander – Algernon Moncrieff
Hayley Carmichael – Lane / Merriman
Hugh Dennis – Reverend Canon Chausuble
Stephen Fry – Lady Bracknell
Shobna Gulati – Miss Prism
Kitty Hawthorne – Gwendolen Fairfax
Jasmine Kerr – Ensemble / Understudy Gwendolen Fairfax and Cecily Cardew
Sam Liu – Ensemble / Understudy Jack Worthing and Algernon Moncrieff
Gillian McCafferty – Ensemble / Understudy Lady Bracknell and Miss Prism
Elliot Pritchard – Ensemble / Understudy Algernon Moncrieff and Jack Worthing
Liv Spencer – Ensemble / Understudy Reverend Canon Chasuble and Merriman / Lane
Nathan Stewart-Jarrett – Jack Worthing
Jessica Whitehurst – Cecily Cardew
ARTISTIC TEAM
Director – Max Webster
Set and Costume Designer – Rae Smith
Lighting Designer – Jon Clark
Sound Designer – Nicola T. Chang
Movement Director – Carrie-Anne Ingrouille
Composer – DJ Walde
Physical Comedy Advisor – Joyce Henderson
Intimacy Coordinator – Ingrid Mackinnon
Casting Director – Alastair Coomer CDG
Voice and Dialect Coach – Kate Godfrey
Associate Director – Aaliyah Mackay
Associate Set Designer – Tim Blazdell
Associate Costume Designer – Johanna Coe
Associate Lighting Designer – Hector Murray
Associate Sound Designer – Christopher Reid
Wigs, Hair and Make-Up – Kate Elizabeth
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST
By Oscar Wilde
Nöel Coward Theatre, 85-88 St Martin’s Lane, WC2N 4AP
Until 10 January 2026
