I usually don’t do theatre reviews, but since I’m studying the Victorian era it seems appropriate to do so for a play by Oscar Wilde.
The Importance of Being Earnest, reputed to be Wilde’s funniest play and certainly his most performed, is now playing at the Vaudeville in London. Some interesting interpretive decisions have been made.
One of the main characters, Algernon, plays piano in the opening scene and gets a kiss from a character who looks like Wilde, who then dashes off-stage. No problem there. Wilde sometimes spoke at the end of his plays, and it was charming to have him appear, just for a moment. But then, throughout the first section, Algernon flirts with, touches, and shares cigarettes with his manservant, as if the two are in an intimate relationship.
I have no objection at all to gay relationships. I do object when class lines are crossed in a play which makes fun of such class distinctions, most often by having its central elitist characters make ongoing references to the unsuitability of the lower orders. It is not unlikely that Algernon would sleep with men. However, despite the fact that this sort of thing occasionally occurred, it is unlikely that he’d sleep with his own servant.
Wilde himself, of course, was the lower class participant in his love affair with Lord Alfred Douglas. I know some of Wilde’s history and sympathized with the director’s efforts to get his story and his sexuality into the play. The problem is that it isn’t there. Even though “Earnest” was his last play before he was arrested for sodomy, and Alfred’s father was angry with him, the play is devoid of anything pertaining to his personal life. It is a brutal, straightforward critique of late Victorian class and manners, not gender or sexuality.
So it was disconcerting to have Algernon pinching Jack on the behind, or everyone engaging in stolen kisses (making sure to show two female servants doing so).
Even if one could find gaity within the subtext, a director trying to demonstrate it should bring it out in the text. Instead, the actors all spoke their lines at breakneck speed — the humor was there (Wilde will out) but the lines were declared loudly. There was no slyness or subtlety to the delivery. Algernon was consistently declaratory, Jack was consistently perturbed. It reminded me of Bialystock and Bloom in The Producers, but had less warmth to the relationship.
There are sexually-tinged moments in the text. The female characters clearly have sexual desires for their “Earnest” men, and both were delightful in this regard.
I understand that we live in a time when gender and sexuality are top political and social issues, and I also understand that plays need to be updated to appeal to contemporary audiences. But with this one, the central conflict is still very much present in today’s society. People still look down on others for various reasons, and Wilde’s wit about pretentiousness still applies. There is no need for an update.
The actors did a wonderful job with the direction they’d been given. Perhaps the director could have listened more to Wilde.
