An Oscar Wilde reboot that’s not earnest enough

The Importance of Being Earnest
National Theatre, London, until January 25

The first thing to be said about Max Webster’s production of The Importance of Being Earnest is that it’s a lot of fun, very entertainingly acted and stunningly good-looking thanks to Rae Smith’s set and costume design.

It’s difficult, of course, to go terribly wrong with Oscar Wilde’s much-loved comedy, but it’s so much-loved it’s well nigh impossible to ever really ring the changes with it. Webster makes a few attempts at it, however, making Lady Bracknell a grand Caribbean matriarch in the shape of Sharon D Clarke who is determined to see her charge Gwendolen (Ronke Adekoluejo) married off well.

He also introduces an overtly homoerotic element to the friendship between Jack (Hugh Skinner) and Algernon (Ncuti Gatwa), suggesting in one scene that they and the women they are chasing are all actually bisexual. He also periodically has some of his male characters in drag, which is again an interesting idea, but he ultimately lacks the courage of any of his convictions.

An all-male, or, for that matter, all-female version of Earnest would actually be quite entertaining to see, as would making Jack and Algernon’s a gay relationship, or even exploring the potential resistance that there might have been to a mixed-race union in the times in which the play is set, but it’s as if with each attempt at anything new, Webster feels he has to abandon it after a few minutes when he remembers he’s directing a classic.

The National has clearly spent a fortune on this production – it boasts some of the most stunningly beautiful sets I have seen all year – but ultimately it’s ever so slightly bewildering because Webster has ultimately just played around with the idea of doing something fresh and original with Wilde’s classic.

The acting honours, incidentally, go not to any of the principals but to Richard Cant as the Rev Canon Chasuble and Amanda Lawrence as Miss Prism.