THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST To 25 July.
London.
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST
by Oscar Wilde.
Open Air Theatre Regent’s Park To 25 July 2009.
Mon-Sat 8pm Mat Thu & Sat 2.30pm.
Captioned 15 July.
Runs 2hr 45min One interval.
TICKETS: 0844 826 4242.
www.openairtheatre.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 8 July.
Elegant if a trifle laboured (or An elegant trifle, laboured).
Rarely has everything in the garden been so lovely as designer Kevin Knight’s rose-strewn lawn for Oscar Wilde’s central act. A silver stream seems to run through Cecily’s country idyll, topped by a mini bridge of sighs where this soulful young person can – well, sigh.
It sums up the joys and frustrations of Irina Brown’s production. A certain laboured tendency, a feeling the young men know they’re spouting crisply-ironed wit, that the neatly-gauged servants – John Beeny’s Lane showing by momentary expressions how he’s learned to cover for Algernon, Jim Hooper’s rustic Merriman slowly imploding with the shock of events – know their style as much as their place.
And if only Susan Wooldridge’s vividly-gowned Lady Bracknell didn’t lose command by swaying and gesturing – she who moves most, moves least on stage – seeming to force all her soul into announcing her lines.
If only that curving slope – a spiral staircase without the stairs - weren’t so obviously intended to be comic, like the distant house that’s really a doll’s house into which Cecily’s confined, a comic Mrs Helmer, for a few unfunny moments.
But what larks in the garden when Julie Legrand’s Miss Prism invests stylisation with comic life, every sentence finely pointed yet seeming to arrive straight from the thoughts of a commonplace mind.
And Jo Herbert’s decided Gwendolen, who will certainly become like her mother only three times more so, arrives at Cecily’s in her tight, striped dress, unsuited as she herself for the country, tottering on the slopes like an upended pencil ever-liable to fall over. Meanwhile Lucy Briggs Owen’s Cecily bounds around, leaping across the stream with the artful freedom of youth – a Wilde child showing naivety is not necessarily innocence.
Dominic Tighe’s Algy improves from a rather effortful opening, but the finest creation, with Cecily, is Ryan Kiggell’s John – his every word seeming to arrive from de-luxe vocal chords through a mouth stuffed with fur-lined pebbles, accompanied by a massive sense of self-importance.
And Matthew Scott’s Wagnerian-quoting score cunningly surrounds a Valkyrie-quoting doorbell with cosy Siegfried Idyll domesticity, then swingtime Tristan when love blooms among the roses.
Lane: Christopher Beeny.
Algernon Moncrieff: Dominic Tighe.
John Worthing: Ryan Kiggell.
Lady Bracknell: Susan Wooldridge.
Hon Gwendolen Fairfax: Jo Herbert.
Cecily Cardew: Lucy Briggs Owen.
Miss Prism: Julie Legrand.
Rev Canon Chasuble: Richard O’Callaghan.
Merriman: Jim Hooper.
Ensemble: Penelope McGhie, Kirsten Hazel Smith, Geoffrey Towers, Harry Long.
Musicians: Neil McArthur, Thomas Bowles, Richard Hart, Shaun Thompson.
Director: Irina Brown.
Designer: Kevin Knight.
Lighting: Tim Mascall.
Sound: Fergus O’Hare.
Music: Matthew Scott.
Movement: Sue Lefton.
Voice coach/Text consultant: Barbara Houseman.
Assistant director: Phil Ormrod.
Assistant movement: Rebecca Harper.
2009-07-10 01:23:58