There are currently two (at least) productions of The Importance of Being Earnest running in Sydney. To wildly misquote a famous playwright: “To have one production may be regarded as good fortune; to have two is a godsend.”
One of these productions is by the Sydney Theatre Company at the Roslyn Packer Theatre. That show runs 2 hours 20 mins (with interval) and tickets are $117. The other is in The Bordello Room at the Kings Cross Hotel. This show runs 65 mins and tickets are $35.
I saw the one at the top of the pub.
Wilde’s script has been shortened (as the more discerning may have guessed from the word ‘expedited’ in the title.) The play is an absolute classic of comedy, and in this version all its wit and mischief shine through.
Three actors play all nine characters, and this doubling, tripling, quadrupling beautifully enhances the madcap fun. Under the direction of Keith Bosler, David Woodland, Lib Campbell and Tai Scrivener are magnificent, playing each character with a total commitment to their crazy comic potential. The deliciously absurd costuming by Tanya Woodland is icing on the cake.
The show gallops through at a cracking pace, and is given a suitably playful sound track by musician Courtney Powell.
For some time now, it’s been the fashion to view The Importance of Being Earnest as a type of queer piece, a coded exploration of the necessity for complex and duplicitous identities in a heteronormative society. This reading is no doubt encouraged by Wilde’s miserable fate. However, this production privileges audacity and exuberance, and so joyfully resists any single reading; it both delights and indicts, in myriad ways, with Wilde’s gloriously subversive humour.
Paul Gilchrist
The Importance of Being Earnest Expedited
at The Bordello Room, Kings Cross Hotel, as part of the Sydney Fringe
until 23 Sept
sydneyfringe.com/events/the-importance-of-being-earnest-expedited/
Image by Stephen Reinhardt
Theatre Red 