Given a four star rating by most of the British press and a hit at the Vaudeville Theatre in London’s West End, Oscar Wilde’s The Importance Of Being Earnest is the most entertaining feel-good filmed stage production so far this year.

It is hilarious! Director Adrian Noble (A Midsummer Night’s Dream) gives it a gender-bending switch by casting David Suchet (Poiret) as the pompous Lady Bracknell and it works brilliantly; Suchet gives a brilliantly arch performance, complete with a death stare that would put our own Foreign Minister’s on the back bench!

Wilde’s superb satire was first performed (with the subtitle A Trivial Comedy For Serious People) in 1895 during the Victorian era, just prior to his falling foul of the period’s oppressive criminal code. This was a time when society was sexually repressive and had a very strict social code of moral and social conduct and one of the major themes of the play involved the trivialisation of the institution of marriage. Although the play was a huge success, a few short months after it opened Wilde was imprisoned for two years for ‘gross indecency,’ code for homosexuality. It seems society could accept ‘immoral behaviour’ on stage but not in real life.

The cast is headed by Suchet, who is simply magnificent as the formidable Lady Bracknell, but he is ably supported by Philip Cumbus (a regular performer at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre) as the dandy Algernon “Algy” Moncrieff and Michael Benz (Downtown Abbey) as Algy’s dependable friend John Worthing. The two likeable rogues are guilty of “bunburying” in order to woo the objects of their desire, that is, they each invent a friend who has peculiarities that require them to make regular departures from their quotidian lives. The smitten young ladies are played superbly by Emily Barber (Billy Liar) as Gwendolyn Fairfax and Imogen Doel (Collaboration) as the not-so-silly ingénue Cecily Cardew; the latter, in particular, is highly amusing and is as entertaining as Suchet’s Lady Bracknell.

If you’re in need of a good laugh and a lover of high farce, The Importance Of Being Earnest is not to be missed. Wilde’s vision of the society he was railing against still resonates today. His lines are as powerful now as when they were written, for he revealed the hypocrisy that lies at the heart of society. As Gwendolyn explains in the play, “In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing.”

// SALT

Previewed at Sony Theatre, Sydney, on 20 January 2016