The Importance of Being Earnest

The Importance of Being Earnest. Image, Ciaran Bagnall

*****

Double lives and mixed messages. An apt description for Oscar Wilde’s classic comedy The Importance of Being Earnest, as well as director Jimmy Fay’s fandango production at the Lyric Theatre. In which pre-show images of Victorian styled advertisements scroll across the curtain. Iconic posters for strange and peculiar products. Visually, it’s all of a period, leaving you with an unexplained hankering for ice-cream. Except the jazz score supporting the visuals is from a much later period. The first mixed message, immediately followed by cinematic opening credits in the style of Monty Python, a device later returned to for transitions. Granted, Neil O’Driscoll’s projections are a stroke of brilliance, but aren’t we in a theatre to watch a play? Might as well throw in some vigorous piano playing reminiscent of a recital of The Warsaw Concerto with 1940s Rank Organisation written all over it. Bewilderment mounting and still no one has spoken, aside from Neil Keery’s nasal butler’s house keeping announcements.

Adam Gillian and Meghan Tyler in The Importance of Being Earnest. Image, Ciaran Bagnall

Once dialogue arrives, the real crazy starts. Traces of camp seventies sit-coms, music hall shenanigans, hints of Jeeves and Wooster, The Good Old Days singalong, add your own spotted reference, all of it peppered with drag brunch bitchiness. Leaving you to wonder has Fay finally lost his mind? While that possibility should never be dismissed, The Importance of Being Earnest is never a case of too many cooks but, rather, of one smartly intrepid chef. Mixing the oddest ingredients to release strange new favours that, if initially making for bizarre combinations, soon simmer and marinate into a sumptuous, mouth watering casserole. Dishing up lashings of laughter along with one the finest comedy performances of recent years.

Allison Harding and Adam Gillian in The Importance of Being Earnest. Image, Ciaran Bagnall

From its rousing start to rousing finish, The Importance of Being Earnest initially journeys through peaks and troughs as ingredients are given time to percolate. Wilde’s comedy of Victorian manners seeing Conor O’Donnell’s camptastic Algernon foregrounding Wilde’s subtextual subversions. A comfort eating cousin beset by petty jealousies, Algy has a bone to pick with Adam Gillian’s foppish, leading man Earnest, a straight-ish foil for the ensuing comedy with secrets to hide who shines in the third act. Neither bachelor averse to some gay coded disappearances with make believe relatives. Each dependent on the staunch Lady Bracknell to ensure marriage to the love of their lives, the ditzy Cecily and vivacious Gwendolyn. Or should that be beards of their lives? No matter. Lost babies, found handbags, old secrets and a passion for the name Earnest, another double meaning, ensure we’re left eternally gratefully that the course of true-ish love never runs smooth but makes for endless wit and merriment.

Conor O'Donnell and Calla Hughes Nic Aoidh in The Importance of Being Earnest. Image, Ciaran Bagnall

If its men are hilarious, with Martin Maguire’s Reverend Chasuble adding additional comic texture, The Importance of Being Earnest’s women are simply magnificent. Jo Donnelly’s Mrs Prism, a woman of later years looking for the love she missed out on, proves an excellent comic foil. Along with Allison Harding’s priggish Lady Bracknell, whose pomp commands the stage with unquestioned authority. Both offset by two brilliantly exaggerated, larger than life performances. Beginning with Calla Hughes Nic Aoidh as the delightedly daft Cecily. A day dreaming Disney princess in a Minnie Mouse outfit, Hughes Nic Aoidh flits about like a wannabe ballerina in a performance that goes all the way over the top. Finding there Meghan Tyler’s superlative Gwendolyn. A femme fatale lusting with privilege, Gwendolyn proves to be the secret ingredient that brings this meal together. Tyler serving up a comedy masterclass in timing, expression and gesture. Some act funny, some are funny, then there’s whatever it is Tyler is doing. A born natural, the magisterial Tyler’s detailed performance is effervescent and irresistible whilst looking utterly effortless. Tyler mining pure comedy gold every time. The best thing about last year’s Aurora, with The Importance of Being Earnest Tyler shows she can produce comedy performances to a world class level, creating an iconic, unforgettable Gwendolyn in the process.

Meghan Tyler in The Importance of Being Earnest. Image, Ciaran Bagnall

A kitsch, visual feast, Stuart Marshall’s period set, Mary Tumelty’s superb lights, Catherine Kodicek’s crayon costumes and Garth McConaghie’s excellent sound and compositions see The Importance of Being Earnest land somewhere between the familiar and the fresh, invigorating what can sometimes be predictable and flabby. Everyone imagines a definitive version. Yet most discover that, like the elusive Earnest, it’s impossible to pin down. All it does is colour expectations. Yet set them aside, meet Fay’s fabulous fun head on, and you might discover another hidden Earnest. Technically and performatively delightful, Fay restores to Wilde that wild, subversive, fun filled energy that often gets lost beneath Gender Study assignments. On top of which there’s Tyler. At the rate Tyler is going, she should probably start working on her acceptance speeches. For what? Her sky appears to have no limits.

The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde, directed by Jimmy Fay, runs at The Lyric Theatre, Belfast, until July 6.

For more information visit The Lyric Theatre, Belfast