TEXT 17. THE IMPORTANCE OF BEEING EARNEST AT REGENT’S PARK

by Charles Spencer

(A delightful open-air production of Oscar Wilde’s masterpiece persuades us to see and hear the play afresh)

The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) is the most perfect high comedy in the English language. Unfortunately, it has become almost too familiar, so that connoisseurs are often anticipating or indeed silently mouthing the greatest lines before they are delivered. Even a play as brilliant as this can lose something of its allure with repetition.

All credit then to director Irina Brown who in this delightful production persuades us to see and hear the play afresh. It helps that we are in the open air, even on a grey and drizzly night, for the breeze, birdsong and rustling leaves banish the feeling that we are watching a dusty museum piece.

Brown refuses to stage the play, as is normally the case, as if it were an almost naturalistic piece of late Victoriana. Wilde’s dialogue is the very reverse of naturalistic – it is epigrammatic, showily artificial, and blessed with a timeless sense of mischief, daring and wit that has never been equalled, though Stoppard and Orton have come close.

The stage in Kevin Knight’s design is dominated by an elegant curving ramp on which the characters often enter and exit an almost bare white stage. A large mirror reflects the audience back at itself and an ensemble of servants aggrievedly eavesdrop on their masters. The cigarette-case argument between Algernon and Jack turns into a rambunctious physical fight, with chases round, and daring leaps over, a circular table.

In the second act, set outdoors in Wilde’s original, scores of rose blooms cover the stage through which the cast have carefully to negotiate their moves.

Some might dismiss all this as an infernal liberty with Wilde’s masterpiece. I believe it is a breath of fresh air that allows us to experience the play anew. The dazzling, dizzying dialogue in which Wilde treats “all trivial things very seriously and all the serious things of life with sincere and studied triviality” zings, sings and stings in this production”.

Dominic Tighe’s Algernon is insufferably and hilariously smug as he wolfs down cucumber sandwiches while Ryan Kiggell’s Jack brings a delicious booming pomposity to the stage. Susan Wooldridge, in one of the most preposterous hats I have ever seen, slyly plays Lady Bracknell as if the old trout were secretly in on the joke of her own authoritarian outrageousness, wincing as if physically attacked when she hears the squalid details of lost babies at London railway termini. The famous handbag is merely the straw that breaks this aristocratic camel’s back. Jo Herbert and Lucy Briggs Owen duel with lethal verbal panache as Gwendolen and Cecily, the latter bringing a peaches-and-cream complexion and a palpable sexuality to the stage, the latter a rare quality in Wilde. And there is touching pathos from Julie Legrand as the bereft Miss Prism.

It is hard to imagine a finer entertainment for an enchanted summer night.

Video

VIDEO 9. FIVE TRUTHS

9. You are going to watch two films of Ophelia interpreted through the lens of Konstantin Stanislavski and Peter Brook (an eminent English theatre and film director and innovator).Read the following information before watching Video 8.

What are the differences between five of the most influential European theatre practitioners of the 20th century? How would these five directors work with the actress playing Ophelia in the famous mad scene in Shakespeare's Hamlet? What would they ask the actress to do and how would they ask the actress to behave?Five Truths, a video installation asking these questions. The multi-screen installation brings together five interpretations of Ophelia's madness in Hamletand consists of ten short films suggesting possible variations in what you might see. Ten screens of varying sizes simultaneously play films of Ophelia interpreted dramatically through the lens of Konstantin Stanislavski, Antonin Artaud, Bertolt Brecht, Jerzy Grotowski and Peter Brook.Created by director Katie Mitchell, video designer Leo Warner, set designer Vicki Mortimer, lighting designer Paule Constable and sound designer Gareth Fry, starring Michelle Terry as Ophelia.

10. Watch Video 8.Fill in the gaps in Ophelia’s monologue with the words from the list below.

He is dead and gone, lady,

He is dead and gone;

At his head a grass-green ____________,

At his heels a stone.

They bore him barefac’d on the____________

(Hey non nony, nony, hey nony)

And in his grave rain’d many a tear.

Fare you well, my dove!

There's rosemary, that's for remembrance. Pray you, love, remember. And there’s some____________, that’s for thoughts.There’s a daisy. I would give you some violets, but they ____________ all when my father died. They say he made a good end.

And will he not come again?

And will he not come again?

No, no, he is dead;

He never will come again.

Go to thy ____________;

He never will come again.

List of words:deathbed, turf, wither’d, bier, pansies.