After the wonderful modern reimagining of the Oscar Wilde story of The Picture of Dorian Gray, I was excited to see that Lawrence Batley Theatre (whose artistic director, Henry Filloux-Bennett, had written the version) were producing another adaption of a classic Oscar Wilde play, The Importance of Being Earnest. It is perhaps my favourite of his plays, written in 1895, with witty dialogue in a farcical situation in which Jack Worthing leads a double life with a serious attitude in the country under the name Jack and assumes the name Earnest in London. The confusion is multiplied when his friend Algernon Moncrief turns up in his country home as Earnest.
Adapter Yasmeen Khan updates this by making Algy an “internationally famous good looking and successful” actor (played by Tom Dixon) the mentor of the not very successful Northern Vlogger Earnest (real name Jamil) played by Gurjeet Singh. Earnest is in love with Gul (Nikki Patel) the daughter of Mrs Bergum (Mina Anwar, who also directs) while Algy becomes desperate to meet Earnest’s “cousin/sister/aunt” Safina (Zoe Iqbal) who lives in the country and is being guided by her Lifestyle guru Mrs Prism (Melanie Marshall). The parallels to the original are easy to see but whereas the Picture of Dorian Gray adaption still felt true to Oscar Wilde’s characters and the updating brilliantly made it relevant to today, this adaption is a curious mash-up.
