How Wilde’s play would have looked if made into a Carry On film
The Importance of Being Earnest
Oscar Wilde once said of The Importance of Being Earnest that “The first act is ingenious, the second beautiful and the third abominably clever”. This may seem immodest, but his 1895 play with its delicious aphorisms, delicate structure and veiled plea to relax the rigid social confines of Victorian society is clearly a masterpiece. So it’s sad to report that Michael Fentiman’s production (the last in Dominic Dromgoole’s West End Wilde season) is as subtle as concrete.
If the Carry On team had ever decided to adapt the play, the results would have been similar. It opens with Algernon (Fehinti Balogun) sitting at his grand piano locked in an embrace with a shadowy male figure. Before long, this sexually charged Algy is getting intimate with his manservant, Lane, and there’s more. Algy and Jack (Jacob Fortune-lloyd) feed each other muffins with lascivious intent and a sexually frustrated Gwendolen (Pippa Nixon) is rubbing herself against that grand piano. I know that we sometimes overestimate the repressive tendencies of the Victorians but this makes a mockery of Wilde’s subtle social commentary as the subtext is suddenly erased.
The fact that many of the cast bellow their lines as if their lives depended on it suppresses the sparkle of Wilde’s writing and Sophie Thompson as Lady Bracknell is particularly at fault here. Thankfully, things improve in Act Two, due to the wow factor of Madeleine Girling’s gorgeous set design and because it introduces Stella Gonet and Fiona Button (as Miss Prism and Cecily respectively) who give the best performances. Button has a modernity to her that doesn’t feel forced and you admire this feisty miss who “knows perfectly well that I look quite plain after my German lesson”. Gonet’s governess Miss Prism, meanwhile, seems to have entered from an entirely different production. The late scene in which she famously confesses to accidentally depositing baby Jack in a handbag at Victoria station is skilfully achieved.
If the same heights were reached elsewhere we would have been in business. Unfortunately, it’s an exceptional moment in a raucous, muddle-headed production.