{"id":2500251,"date":"2026-07-13T15:08:42","date_gmt":"2026-07-13T15:08:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2500251"},"modified":"2026-07-13T15:08:42","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T15:08:42","slug":"the-importance-of-being-earnest-review-gloriously-madcap-opera-achieves-new-heights-of-delirium-opera","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/the-importance-of-being-earnest-review-gloriously-madcap-opera-achieves-new-heights-of-delirium-opera\/","title":{"rendered":"The Importance of Being Earnest review \u2013 gloriously madcap opera achieves new heights of delirium | Opera"},"content":{"rendered":"

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A<\/span>nyone who has seen the opera before will recognise the tall rack of white dinner plates, stacked and primed for you-know-what. Anyone who knows Oscar Wilde\u2019s play<\/a> will recognise its punchlines, transposed by composer Gerald Barry<\/a> into a kind of staccato mashup between speech and singing. But in Jack Furness\u2019s new production of Barry\u2019s The Importance of Being Earnest for Garsington Opera, familiarity is otherwise avoided.<\/p>\n

Barry has already transformed Wilde\u2019s \u201ctrivial comedy for serious people\u201d into what he calls \u201can opera of delirium\u201d. Singing offers another layer of perversity, orchestral scoring another source of wit, and stage business a further level of zaniness. Furness\u2019s additions include a grand piano on stilts, a kangaroo that meets a nasty end, an enormous chaise longue-cum-slide (which suffers one of the play\u2019s mysterious explosions during the dinner interval), a dirt floor and working hose to allow the protagonists to be mud-smeared and soaked through in alternation, and a herd of miniature cows. The result is a kind of hyperactive nightmare, its pace slowed by all these efforts to shock, the comedy turned sour.<\/p>\n

Hannah Wolfe\u2019s gloriously madcap costume designs stand out in the darkness. Algernon wears a bowtie with his silk PJs, Gwendoline has ultra-structured dresses that riff subtly on 1890s silhouettes, Miss Prism wears walking trousers and sensible shoes with her neatly coiffed late-Victorian updo. Cecily\u2019s outfits are hysterically frilled and uniformly pink.<\/p>\n

<\/svg><\/span>Zahid Siddiqui as John Worthing, Se\u00e1n Boylan as Algernon, Jennifer France as Cecily Cardew, Holly Brown as Gwendolen Fairfax and Waddington as Lady Bracknell.<\/span> Photograph: Julian Guidera<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Perhaps inevitably, Lady Bracknell\u2019s looks got the evening\u2019s loudest laughs. Played by Garsington regular bass-baritone Henry Waddington, she boasts a blunt grey bob, lipstick and a beard. Appearing first in a trouser suit, later in what I can only describe as Bismarck<\/a>-goes-dominatrix, complete with shiny latex cape and military helmet, she keeps a gun in her Thatcherite handbag. Waddington\u2019s capacity for deadpan was vital, as was his enthralling stage presence and astonishing facility with words in both English and German.<\/p>\n

The cast was otherwise a true ensemble of singing actors. For Se\u00e1n Boylan\u2019s Algernon, Zahid Siddiqui\u2019s Jack and Holly Brown\u2019s Gwendolen, taut coordination, excellent diction and the ability to spit tea on command mostly outweighed the conventional business of tone production \u2013 though Jennifer France\u2019s Cecily squeaked and shrilled as only a genuinely fine soprano could. Susan Bickley was oddly touching as Miss Prism, Kevin Whately a warm star-turn in the speaking role of Dr Chasuble and Peter Lidbetter a po-faced delight as the long-suffering butler, his plate-smashing a masterpiece of comic timing.<\/p>\n

Douglas Boyd led a subset of the Philharmonia Orchestra (on stage throughout) in a high-definition account of Barry\u2019s score, sharply mimetic humour and all. If Furness\u2019s production sees the laughs dwindle, this opera\u2019s latest outing is welcome proof that it has achieved that holy grail of contemporary music theatre: life beyond the premiere.<\/p>\n