![]() ![]() ![]() It may be comforting in its familiarity, and yet we have still to see an innovative attempt at tackling The Importance of Being Earnest upon the Cambridge stage. And yet what Jess Landy and Sophie Gilbert have produced through a restaging of this old classic seems incredibly familiar – a predictable déjà vu moment for the average Wilde fan. The script has been considered as one of Wilde’s best: clever and witty as a charade of social expectations, displaying the interactions of frivolous and childish characters as they attempt to make serious decisions. It seems that the “farce of miscommunication”, has been somehow, in fact, miscommunicated. ![]() To give them credit, it does stay true to what we expect – a script abundant with triviality and word play, period costumes and some titters from the audience – and yet also veers from the wonderful expression needed to carry it into the realms of hilarity. As Algernon enters the stage for the first time in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, he says of his own piano performance: “I don't play accurately – any one can play accurately – but I play with wonderful expression.” If only this were true of the CADS production of Wilde’s popular farce. ![]()
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