THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST. To 28 September.

Northampton

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST
by Oscar Wilde

Royal Theatre To 28 September 2002
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Thu & Sat 2.30pm
Audio-described 17 September
BSL Signed 24 September
Runs 2hr 45min Two intervals

TICKETS 01604 624811
Review Timothy Ramsden 12 September

Wildeans, and others, should rush to Northampton for this extraordinary production where nothing's taken for granted: it's full of detailed insights.With Ruari Murchison's diaphanous curtain-surround turning the Royal's stage into a giant shower, and Debussy tinkling delicately on the piano, severe anorexia seems threatened for Bill Alexander's production. Not a bit: this is as fresh, strikingly performed and detailed a walk on the Wilde side as we're likely to come across.

Under a thin veneer of service, Mark Dempsey's youthful Lane could be an insolent rent-boy who knows where his bread's buttered, smiling understood implications at an Algernon who pours sherry for his own manservant. It's only respectable John Worthing's unexpected return that has the lad Lane shooting out of his chair, deprived of his drink by the need for a public face.

The cucumber crisis becomes yet another strand of the pair's continuing understanding, Dempsey's Lane barely concealing his smile as the pair put on a show of convention, the comment about 'ready money' shifting its usual focus to become less servant's comment on master's extravagance, more shared joke.

Yet this isn't a Wildely distorted production, straining for novelty. That relationship is only one of many fresh revelations that enrich the production, shaking us out of preconceived expectations.

To see the charismatic, flaxen-haired Algernon of Oliver Chris drape himself over a harp as Tim Steed's very earnest John leans stylishly across a music-stand, or to watch Steed and Susie Trayling's Gwendolen touching fingers through the harpstrings behind Lady Bracknell's back, is to understand the itches of young desire in a buttoned-up age.

Steed offers a magnificently worried, conscience-strewn John Worthing, earnestly there's no other word justifying every word on the inscribed cigarette-case. He's someone who could never achieve his friend's insouciance, a status difference that finds its perfect expression in the uneven allocations of muffins which provides a snap finish to act two.

Then there's Carol Royle's elegant Lady Bracknell youthful enough for a couple more marriages at least. Young enough still to have a concern for her place in society by obeying its whims, rather than the Olympian lady we often see. That scene is played almost confidentially across the tiny tea-table, her Ladyship leaning forward with an elbow amid the cups to ask about railway termini, a teacher smilingly coaxing facts from a rather dimwitted pupil who can't understand the questions. She saves the scorn for her exit.

The impact is striking. It's common enough to see a Gwendolen who'll clearly become a Lady Bracknell. Here's a Lady Bracknell who's still becoming 'Lady Bracknell' attractive, manipulative, almost sadistic in her charming show of arm gestures accompanying sophisticated smiles.

The young women aren't behindhand in assertiveness. Trayling's impeccably composed Gwendolen contrasts Naomi Frederick's childlike Cecily (pronounced 'Sicily'), but both are making their way in their world. In a production, or performance, with less elan Frederick's sudden switches from soft-voiced, innocent-eyed softness to stentorian fury when opposed would seem exaggerated. But the production is extraordinary, and Frederick a very fine young performer.

Add Robert J. Page's rotund and morose denial of the name Merriman, Linda Broughton's sewn-up face as Miss Prism melting into the ecstasy of the lightest kiss from John Quentin's admirable Chasuble a Victorian country clergyman for whom nine-tenths of the world clearly doesn't exist and you have as important, thoughtful and revisionist an Earnest as you could hope to find.

John Worthing JP: Tim Steed
Algernon Moncrieff: Oliver Chris
Rev. Canon Chasuble DD: John Quentin
Merriman: Robert J. Page
Lane: Mark Dempsey
Lady Bracknell: Carol Royle
Hon. Gwendolen Fairfax: Susie Trayling
Cecily Cardew: Naomi Frederick
Miss Prism: Linda Broughton

Director: Bill Alexander
Designer/Costume: Ruari Murchison
Lighting: Jon Buswell
Sound: Liam Matthews
Pianist: Maurice Merry

2002-09-13 17:28:22