Written by Joshua King, Simon Paris & Say It Again. Sorry?
Directed by Simon Paris, Produced by Simon Paris
Southampton MAST Mayflower Studios
Saturday 20th January 2024, 14.30
CAST:
Brendan Barclay – Ernest / George
Josh Haberfield- Simon Slough, director
Amy Cooke-Hodgson – Lady Bracknell
Guido Garcia Lueches- Algernon + Production manager / Casting director
Ben Mann – Josh, stage manager
Trynity Silk – Gwendolen + Set & costume designer
Rhys Tees – Lane / Canon Chasuble / Miss Prism + Assistant producer
Lucy Trodd- Lady Bracknell
The first thing to say is that this is on tour (LINK TO VENUES) through to July 2024. Take a look at where it’s going. It’s almost certainly going somewhere near most UK readers. Do not miss it! If we can, we will try to see it again. Note that everyone in the cast has both an on-stage and a backstage role. It’s team work.
The concept is part of a long English tradition. It may not be in the text, but I’ve never seen the Pyramus and Thisbe play within A Midsummer Night’s Dream where it hasn’t “gone wrong” in some way. Then The Two Ronnies did a sketch where the village butcher had to step on stage and take a role in an AmDram production when a cast member had an accident. Michael Frayn’s Noises Off is the classic of the ‘goes wrong’ genre, which leads to The Play That Goes Wrong / Peter Pan Goes Wrong / The Bank Robbery That Goes Wrong. When we were writing the English Channel ELT comedy series in the 1990s, an unused script (inspired by the Two Ronnies) was Village Hall Drama where the prim local vicar had to step into a romantic play scene after someone had an accident. It was deemed too culture bound and never made it past the script-editing stage. Those plays don’t pull in audience members though. This one is different.
This is a truly delightful example, and it’s based on The Importance of Being Earnest. This is a play that can take anything you do with it, a great example being the Lucy Bailey 2014 production set among The Bunbury Players, an Am Dram troupe in Cheshire. Here we have with a production which starts well for a couple of pages of script, until the lead character, Jack Worthing (known to his London friends as Ernest), fails to appear on cue.
I’m being very wary on plot spoilers, and I’m not going to give away any jokes. They ask for a volunteer to stand in for Ernest. I had been told a little in advance. Rest assured, they guarantee that no one will be forced or persuaded or even asked to step on stage against their will. A friend saw it a couple of days earlier and mentioned that anyone who knew the play well would not be a suitable volunteer. I sat on my hands, and a man behind us (Steve) volunteered. My first reaction was that he was a ‘plant.’ We saw the Disney-MGM Studios Indiana Jones more than once, and the “volunteer” from the audience is hit, thrown around, hoisted up, dropped and finally revealed as a stunt actor. I was totally wrong here. Steve wasn’t a plant. Lack of knowledge is important, because the whole cast pick up and adopt the ” facts” from Jack’s interview with Lady Bracknell, and stay with them. The fact that Steve hadn’t seen the play before made this extremely funny. I would have been awful. Not only have I been in it (Lane / Merriman), done lights on it, seen it, reviewed it, but we used the Lady Bracknell interview in a higher level ELT textbook, so I know all the “correct” Oscar Wilde answers.
I love the style and the execution by this fabulous cast. The style is one we used in our ELT weekly shows. You have fixed anchors … lines and actions throughout … but you’re free to improvise between them. I laughed happily through Act One, admired the stagecraft (Algernon is told by the director to remember the blocking, but it all goes wrong). In Act two they roll on the garden for Jack’s country home. We have heard arguments from the wings with Cecily about her agent. They say they may need more help, and throw two balls back over their shoulders into the audience. There was no argument there. One hit me squarely. No denying. Oh! We went on stage to audition (I’ve been a reviewer too often to decline snootily, though I could have), we knew not what for, and I got the part … of Cecily, Jack’s young ward. I was taken backstage and given a head mic, pink frock and pigtails.
So from now I was a participant, no longer an observer. I had to react and read. So any possibility of commenting has gone. All I can say it was the afternoon of entertainment I’ve most enjoyed in several years, being right in the middle of such wonderful acting and inspired improvisation by the cast and so observing it from a foot away at times. As Cecily had a script, my pre-knowledge was not a problem. They were also lovely to us. They whispered a question as to whether I could lie on the ground … I said I’d have trouble getting up. No problem, said Josh, I’ll get a chair.
After the interval (Acts one and two comprise the first part, unusually as a normal production breaks at the scene change after Act one), more accidents occur in Act Three and gradually the stage fills with volunteer replacements. It felt great watching everyone else, especially the new Miss Prism / Canon Chasuble scene, one Wilde missed (I was mainly standing by the piano watching).
So over to Karen for comment and rating. She said the atmosphere in the audience was great, with everyone rooting for the volunteers (I won’t say why, but the “real” Ernest was marvellous when he turned up). Even though only a few of us participated she said it felt that the whole audience were drawn into feeling they were with us. People were roaring with laughter. Rating?
Five stars from Karen (Personally, I’d give more, but five is the highest and Karen explained slowly and carefully that I wasn’t allowed to rate it). Lovely people came and spoke to me afterwards too. We had a photo in the lobby afterwards (without frock and wig).
*****
10th FEBRUARY – more excitingly, two people came up to me at Chichester Festival Theatre and said ‘You were Cecily in Southampton!’ Fame at last.
LINKS ON THIS SITE
- Importance of Being Earnest 2010 by Oscar Wilde, Rain or Shine Company
- Importance of Being Earnest 2014 by Oscar Wilde, West End & Tour, directed by Lucy Bailey
- Importance of Being Earnest, 2015 by Oscar Wilde with David Suchet as Lady Bracknell
- Importance of Being Earnest 2018 by Oscar Wilde, Classic Spring Theatre
- Importance of Being Earnest, 2019 by Oscar Wilde, Watermill Theatre
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