Hugh Skinner as Jack
and Ncuti Gatwa as Algernon
The Importance of Being Earnest
National Theatre, London, December 2024
Photo by Marc Brenner
090 – The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
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Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest is arguably the most famous romantic comedy in theatrical history. The play is renowned for its effervescent portrait of aristocratic romance, and its impossibly clever wit, including some of the most quotable lines in dramatic literature. But it is also an anarchic parody of social custom and pretension – a serious statement of aesthetic principles and coded sexual politics. The play was written just months before the scandal and trials that would destroy Wilde’s reputation and life. It was first performed at the St James’ theatre in London in February 1895, and Wilde himself said of the play with characteristic modesty, “the first act is ingenious, the second beautiful, the third abominably clever.”
This is our first Wilde play on the podcast, and we start with his last and greatest. As we record this episode a joyous new production of the play is currently running at the National Theatre in London. With its ravishing visual design, its self-conscious knowingness, its championing of an uninhibited lifestyle, and the frank fore-fronting of the play’s sexual resonances, this is a modern rendition that Wilde himself would have loved.
So I am hugely fortunate and delighted to be joined to review this classic of English drama by the production’s director, Max Webster.
Max Webster
Max Webster has directed major productions in London at The Donmar Warehouse, The Old Vic, The Globe and English National Opera, as well as on Broadway, and across Europe and Asia. As an opera staff director he has worked at the Royal Opera House, English National Opera, La Scala, Opera de Lyon & De Nederlands Opera. He was a Baylis director, then Associate Director, at the Old Vic from 2015-2018. and an Associate Director at the Donmar from 2020-2024.
His notable directing credits include his acclaimed production of Macbeth with David Tennant and Cush Jumbo at the Donmar Warehouse and the West End (2024); The Real Thing at the Old Vic (2024), which inspired our recent episode on the play – 085 – The Real Thing; Antigone at Regent Park Open Air Theatre (2022); Henry V at the Donmar (2022); the extraordinary staging of Life of Pi (Broadway, Boston, London, Sheffield 2019-2024), which won five Olivier and three Tony awards ; Fanny and Alexander (Old Vic 2018); and The Lorax (Old Vic 2015, 2017).
Max recommended several plays by Tom Stoppard, suggesting that they be read with Wilde’s influence on Stoppard in mind, including The Real Thing, Arcadia and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.
The Footnotes that accompany our episode on Oscar Wilde’s trivial comedy for serious people, The Importance of Being Earnest, comprise some trivial notes on the source of Lady Bracknell’s name and the Brighton railway line, and some serious notes on the missing scene from the original draft of the play, and the trials of Oscar Wilde.
113 – Arcadia by Tom Stoppard
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Tom Stoppard’s 1993 play, Arcadia, is viewed by many as his finest play, renowned for the breadth of its intellectual interrogations and its formal invention. The play is a structural masterpiece of ideas, as well as a teasing detective story, joyous comedy, and emotionally rich exploration of love and loss.
As we record this episode a wonderful new production of Arcadia is playing at the Duke of York’s theatre in London’s West End, following its acclaimed run at the Old Vic theatre earlier this year. I am delighted to share the challenge and the pleasure of exploring Stoppard’s dazzling drama with the director of the new production, Carrie Cracknell.
112 – Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet
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David Mamet’s modern American classic, Glengarry Glen Ross, is a blistering commentary on the cut-throat reality of the American dream, and its poisonous impact on those who have bought into the myth and machismo of that dream. The play had its world premiere in the small Cottesloe theatre at the National Theatre in London in September 1983, and was first performed in New York the following year, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Mamet also wrote the extended screenplay for the star-studded 1992 film version.
As we recorded this episode a new production of the play was playing at the Old Vic theatre in London, with an all-female cast. This is a particularly provocative idea, because one of the primary themes of this play is masculine identity, and the salesmen in this Chicago office do not hold back in their display of machismo.
To explore Mamet’s unflinching slice of 1980s dog-eat-dog capitalism, I am joined by arts journalist Mark Lawson.
111 – The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui by Bertolt Brecht
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Bertolt Brecht’s ‘gangster spectacle’, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, is both an exuberant and funny piece of theatre, and a chillingly topical political satire. Set in the 1930s Chicago of Al Capone, Brecht presents a parody of the rise of Hitler through the character of the gangster Arturo Ui. The play is a universal cry for vigilance against the rise of unscrupulous, populist leaders who threaten democratic societies and global peace.
As we recorded this episode a new production of the play by the Royal Shakespeare Company was playing in Stratford-upon-Avon, starring Mark Gatiss as the title character.
I am delighted to be joined by both the show’s translator, playwright Stephen Sharkey, and by Brecht scholar, Professor Tom Kuhn, to guide us through Brecht’s political parody.
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