The London UK Theatre Review: The Importance of Being Earnest

By Ross

A grand piano and a pink feathered gown, worn by the unexpected, usher us into this unapologetically delightful romp. Women in black tie and tails and gowned men with
moustaches swirl and preen, until our camptastic lead disrobes with the most mischievous of drawing-room manners. From its first festive image, this West End revival of The Importance of Being Earnest announces itself as pure pleasure-focused performance, theatrical, musical, excessive, and joyously unserious, while also being wickedly smart, all at the same time. Transferred from the National Theatre to the Noël Coward Theatre just in time for our holiday London UK Theatre trip, the production, directed magnificently by Max Webster (Trafalgar Theatre’s The Duchess [of Malfi]), wastes no time inviting us into a world where artifice is virtue, sincerity is suspicious, and delight is the only moral compass worth following.

“Pleasure, pleasure, pleasure” is indeed the engine of this flamboyant staging, which winks and nudges at us with unabashed charm. Oscar Wilde’s meticulous language is never treated as a museum piece by Webster or his ferociously fine cast, but as a living, teasing thing, playful, pointed, and immaculately articulated. “Truth is rarely pure or simple,” Algernon observes, and here deception becomes a game of cards, a kind of casual poker game, where bluffs are flirtation, gossip is kinky foreplay, and the jackpot resembles an artificial presentation of ‘love’ more than animal lust or desire. This is an “age of ideals” where a handbag abandoned in a cloakroom can carry the weight of destiny, or not. And where style, not sincerity, remains the ultimate winning card. Wilde’s comedy thrives not on emotional realism but on precision, rhythm, and the thrill of saying something deliciously improper with perfect manners, and this beautifully crafted revival knows that fact precisely.

The delicious Olly Alexander (“It’s a Sin“) is a revelation as Algernon Moncrieff. All smiles in a razor-sharp, musically playful kind of way, brimming with confidence and a droll wink to us all. He tosses off Wilde’s lines as if they were written yesterday, finding fresh humour in every curve of a sentence. Stephen Fry (Barn’s The Picture of Dorian Gray) as Lady Bracknell is, quite simply, masterful. His creation is imperious and exquisitely timed, dominating the stage without ever forcing a laugh or overplaying its hand.

Kitty Hawthorne (NT’s Kerry Jackson) brings steel and sparkle to Gwendolen Fairfax, while Jessica Whitehurst (Travere/Park’s Cyrano) as Cecily Cardew is all effervescence and quiet cunning. Nathan Stewart-Jarrett (NT’s Angels in America), taking over from Ncuti Gatwa as Jack Worthing, is lovely and funny, but perhaps the least stylistically aligned, occasionally lacking the same surface frivolity as his counterpart in Alexander. He pushes the envelope forward a little too forcibly, but he nonetheless anchors the role with a level of clarity and commitment. 

As with that delightful Noël Coward production, Fallen Angels (now playing at the Menier Chocolate Factory), it is the servants who sometimes steal much of the evening. Hayley Carmichael (NT’s The Birds) as both Merriman and Lane delight in the serving margins, mining enormous comic value from apparent insignificance. Their perfectly judged timing and physical comedy clarify that in Wilde’s world, hierarchy is itself a joke, and that those relegated to the background often have the most fun playing with it. Hugh Dennis (“Fleabag“) and Shobna Gulati (NT’s A Tupperware of Ashes) are equally delicious as Canon Chasuble and Miss Prism, extracting enormous humour from suppressed desire and social propriety barely holding back something far messier, and far more human.

Visually, the production is a spectacular triumph. The sets and costumes by Rae Smith (West End’s The Weir) explode with colour and invention, from hot-pink gowns and opera gloves to fluid, gender-playful silhouettes that lean boldly into the play’s homoerotic subtext. Far from feeling gimmicky (except for maybe that wild, flowery curtain call), the design amplifies Wilde’s games of identity and performance, underscoring how much Earnest has always been about role-playing and deception, although from an effervescent standpoint. Webster’s direction embraces that flamboyance, queerness, campness, and pop-inflected modernity without ever losing its place in the text. The result is exuberant but disciplined, “extra” but exact.

What ultimately makes this Importance of Being Earnest such a pleasure is its confidence. It knows exactly what it is: a big joke, a glittering confection, and a celebration of wit over wisdom. On the lovely Noël Coward stage, the production feels perfectly at home, reminding us why Wilde’s masterpiece endures, and why, in the right hands, being sensible really is excessively boring. This is, without a doubt, one of the undeniable highlights of this theatre junkie’s London trip. It is a revival that doesn’t just honour Wilde’s comedy; it revels in it.