Camp Defiance: The Importance of Being Earnest (Max Webster, NT London)

Our tickets to the National Theatre‘s production of The Importance of Being Earnest happened to coincide with Donald Trump’s inauguration, and while this is the kind of coincidence one may feel smug about because the immediate effects of the atrocity may not be grazing you straight away, I will cling onto its delicious frisson regardless.

It’s not just because ANY revival of ANY Oscar Wilde play by definition stands in opposition to the global resurgence of the right-wing hegemony. It is also because, its ultimate inefficacy as direct political action aside, this particular production – headlined by Sex Education breakout star and current Doctor Who Ncuti Gatwa and directed by Max Webster – is brashly defiant about making the play’s queer subtext into text… and it approaches colourblind casting with an effortlessness that makes non-bigotry look like a delicious joy as well as an ethical obligation.

Sharon D Clarke as Lady Bracknell and Ronkẹ Adékọluẹ́jọ́ as Gwendolen Fairfax. Photo by Marc Brenner

Gatwa may be the main point of attraction in terms of the latter when it comes to audiences not as clued-up to the inner workings of the London theatre scene – and I very much include myself in that comparatively unenlightened category – but it is Sharon D Clarke as Lady Bracknell who emerges as the most memorable revelation.

Anyone even remotely familiar with the play will be tempted to scream ‘d’uh!’. The archly magisterial Augusta’s lines are the most quotable in a play so littered with them they could have emerged from a camp dragon’s mountainside stash – but configuring the character as a stern Jamaican matriarch is the kind of jolt of genius that lends an air of undeniability to a reimagining – one that should silence most skeptics.

Because of course she would be that. D’uh.

Hugh Skinner as Jack Worthing and Ncuti Gatwa as Algernon Moncrieff. Photo by Marc Brenner

THAT is many things, of course… and again, there’s a frisson at play – Bracknell represents the apotheosis of the ruling class in all of its status-obsessed ridiculousness, yes, but Wilde cranking the engine of snobbery up to eleven, then turning it inside-out, is what gives her an air of irresistible camp joy.

It is in that joy that the energy of the play resides, and being allowed into that sandbox where our staid assumptions about this stuff can be left at the door and we can plug into the blown-up version of that Victorian world. In fact maybe it’s not so much of a sandbox as it is a ball-pit or bouncy castle – the brightly coloured production design certainly welcomes the metaphor.

Eliza Scanlen as Cecily Cardew and Ncuti Gatwa as Algernon Moncrieff. Photo by Marc Brenner

So we’re back to colour, and apart from casting – the stage and costumes do scream Bridgerton. But even here, we’re witnessing a triumph at play.

The Netflix smash is an adaptation of the Julia Quinn novels which would certainly have regaled hoards of thrill-seeking bookworms with “something sensational to read on the train”, and whose predecessors Wilde skews in this very play with references to the ‘three-volume novel’.

But it’s no bad thing to piggyback off a mainstream thing that’s done at least some good. And for all its overtures to ‘triviality’ – there is, once again, an electric currency to a production of The Importance of Being Earnest that is wildly, passionately, devotedly, hopelessly out and proud.