York Guides

(Yorkshire Post)

SO compelling was Oscar Wilde's genius, that his work continues to outlive him,
and testament to this is the two productions in Yorkshire this month of his most celebrated play, The Importance of Being Earnest.
York Theatre Royal is staging a traditional version of the classic play, while inventive theatre company Ridiculusmus brings its two-man version of the play to the West Yorkshire Playhouse later this month.
"When I sat there thinking this is the greatest light comedy written in the English Language, I just thought: 'Oh my God, how can I do this?'," says David Leonard, the man who will direct the "straight" version of the play at York.
Leonard, a man more used to appearing on the stage at York as the annual panto's bad guy, is making his directorial debut with Importance, which opened at the theatre last week.
"Damian (Cruden, artistic director of York Theatre Royal) asked me if I wanted to direct the play. He told me to go away and have a think about it and I told him I didn't need to think about it."
It should have come as no surprise to Cruden that Leonard bit his hand off when offered the chance to preside over a production of Wilde's classic.
When the play opened in 1895, the effect was immediate. Wilde's fame as a dramatist began with the production of Lady Windermere's Fan in February 1892, an immediate success. His next comedy was A Woman of No Importance, produced on April 19, 1893 at the Haymarket Theatre in London by Herbert Beerbohm Tree. It repeated the success of Lady Windermere's Fan, consolidating Wilde's reputation as the best writer of "comedy-of-manners" since Richard Brinsley Sheridan. A slightly more serious note was struck with An Ideal Husband, at the Haymarket Theatre on January 3, 1895. Barely a month later, his masterpiece The Importance of Being Earnest appeared at the St James's Theatre.
The play's plot, such as it is – for it is often said that the plot is irrelevant to the dazzling wordplay created by Wilde – tells of wealthy young Jack Worthing and his black-sheep brother, Ernest. In truth Ernest is a fiction created by Jack, the pseudonym allowing him to live a hedonistic life without suffering the consequences, leaving them to Ernest.
Jack wishes to marry Gwendolyn, cousin of his best friend Algernon, but runs into a few problems.
First, Gwendolyn seems to love him only because she believes his name is Ernest, which she thinks is the
most beautiful name in the world.
Second, Gwendolyn's mother is the terrifying Lady Bracknell. Lady Bracknell is horrified when she learns that Jack was adopted, discovered in a handbag at a railway station.
Algernon gets the idea to visit Jack in the country, pretending that he is the mysterious brother Ernest.
Unfortunately, unknown to Algernon, Jack has announced the tragic death of Ernest.
A hilarious series of comic misunderstandings follows, as Algernon-as-Ernest visits the country (as a dead man, as far as the hosts are aware), and Jack shows up in his mourning clothes.
The play caused a sensation.
Years later, the actor Allen Aynesworth (playing Algy opposite George Alexander's Jack) told Wilde's biographer Hesketh Pearson that: "In my 53 years of acting, I never remember a greater triumph than the first night of The Importance of Being Earnest".
The slightly complicated plot is almost secondary to the fact that it is generally regarded as the wittiest play in the English language.
Watching a performance these days is more a game of "spot the famous quotation" than anything else.
"Being an outsider in the fact that he was gay and Irish gave Wilde the ability to stand outside and look in on British society and anatomise it, something which he so skillfully does in this play," adds Leonard.
"I think the play shows just how far ahead of his time Wilde was.
"The sheer genius, wit and philosophy he displays is so far ahead of the time in which he lived, it is incredible."
The second production of the play in Yorkshire next month is here under the directorship of Jude Kelly, the former artistic director of the West Yorkshire Playhouse.
The fact that all the characters will be played by the same two men should serve as testament to the strength of the script – it can survive any tampering and remain as strong as it would in a classic interpretation, something to which reviews of the Ridiculusmus production testify.

The Importance of Being Earnest is at York Theatre Royal until September 17, tickets 01904 623568, and at West Yorkshire Playhouse from September 27 to October 1, tickets 0113 213 7700.