When The Importance of Being Earnest premiered in 1895, it was hailed as the pinnacle of Oscar Wilde’s career. The triumph was short lived: within weeks, he was exposed as a gay man, tried and imprisoned. His reputation never recovered – at least during his lifetime.
When Olly Alexander represented Great Britain at Eurovision in 2024, receiving zero points from the public televote, it seemed he too might need something drastic to avoid a career collapse. Would Alexander have to wait until death for redemption?
Enter Wilde’s Algernon Moncrieff – Alexander’s salvation. In Max Webster’s queer reimagining of the comedy, Alexander inhabits a sexually ambiguous man about town, deploying more hand gestures than an irate Sicilian. In Wilde’s classic farce, Algernon adopts a secret identity in order to shrink his social duties, while his friend Jack Worthing invents a fictional brother named Ernest to escape his country responsibilities. Alexander’s performance is magnetic, but a mid-show sequence of outfit changes – alongside pop music better suited to a H&M dressing room – landed awkwardly. For all his charisma, he is eclipsed by his co-stars.
As Lady Bracknell, Stephen Fry was imperious, his mastery of Wilde’s text undeniable. But it was Nathan Stewart-Jarrett as Worthing who tipped the play from comedy into pantomime. Hurling himself across the stage, shrieking his lines, he left the audience scrambling to keep up. Amid the chaos, Hugh Dennis as Reverend Canon Chasuble and Shobna Gulati as Miss Prism offered gentler – though disproportionately restrained – performances. At times, it felt as though the actors were in entirely different productions.
This iteration of Wilde’s final comic work is visually sumptuous – with actors draped in exquisite period costumes and framed by Rae Smith’s dazzling, lavish Victorian set design. Yet audiences may wish to arrive well rested and with a Red Bull in hand if they hope to keep pace with the hyperactive performances. And Alexander? This time, huit points.
The Importance of Being Earnest
Noël Coward Theatre, London WC2N
[Further reading: When did opera become elitist?]
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This article appears in the 16 Oct 2025 issue of the New Statesman, The Emperor