”Untruthful! My nephew Algernon? Impossible! He is an Oxonian.”
Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest is frequently performed, but being a play of some fame, rarely experimented with quite to the extent that St Hilda’s College Drama Society is doing in 7th week. Whilst keeping the original script, the actors are dressed in modern attire, send text messages instead of telegrams, and Lady Bracknell raises her eyebrows at the iPad that deftly replaces her notebook. Andrew Crump positively struts around on stage, sporting a black leather jacket, as a suave yet extremely annoying Algernon Moncrieff – permanently getting on the nerves of his (spoiler alert) little brother, the periodically flustered Jack Worthing (Callum Luckett). Crump describes his character as “fun to have around, but not really fun to be with,” something Luckett, reaching unsuccessfully for his leopard print cigarette case, heartily agrees with.
The reverberating voice of the reverend Chasuble, as he preaches his “sermon on the meaning of the manna in the wilderness [which] can be adapted to almost any occasion,” floats above the variously prejudiced and posturing cast members with utter gravity, depriving the situation of its last chance of seriousness. What does infuse the play with a hint of tragedy is Miss Prism’s confessional account concerning a handbag, a perambulator and “the manuscript of a three-volume novel of more than usually revolting sentimentality” recounted in a heartbreaking manner by Laura Gledhill.
And then there is of course Lady Bracknell, delivering such gems of Wilde’s subversive wit as: “To be born, or at any rate bred in a handbag, whether it have handles or not, seems to me to display a contempt for the ordinary decencies of family life which reminds one of the worst excesses of the French revolution, and I presume you know what that unfortunate movement led to?” Or, on occasion, delightfully confirming the axiom that divorces are indeed made in heaven: “I am not in favour of long engagements. They give people an opportunity of finding out each other’s characters before marriage. Which I think is never advisable.” But perhaps the most relevant of her pearls is that: “The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately, in England at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever.”
The director, Lata Nobes, feels that “it can be a distraction to focus on the 19th century setting which removes the play from the relatable, and detracts from Wilde’s masterful writing which pokes fun at ideas of social conformity and the so called intellectual”; both extremely relevant for a performance in Oxford. She continues, that the gender blind casting has led to an absolutely dazzlingmale Lady Bracknell (Iarla David Manny) and two female butlers (Alex Barasch and Ellen Gibson). As Nobes says, “highly appropriate for the week following St Hilda’s Gender Equality festival, adding a new dimension to a play written by one of the most famous LGBTQ writers.”
Comedy with Cucumber Sandwiches (a.k.a The Importance of being Earnest) will be taking place on the 7th 8th and 9th of March, 7:30pm, on the stage Jacqueline du Pré Music Building.
