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Oscar Wilde’s comedy was, he said, “written by a butterfly, for butterflies”. Real life may threaten: the mercenary Victorian marriage market and cruel policing of desire that bit Wilde himself so savagely after the 1895 premiere. But the play holds us in a giddy bubble, and Max Webster’s shameless production merrily queers the comedy, shoving subtext from the shadows.
First seen at the National Theatre last winter, it hits the West End with an entirely new cast. Following the granite Sharon D Clarke as Lady Bracknell comes Stephen Fry, plumptiously upholstered in deep purple and emerald and crowned by imperious steel-grey curls. It can be galling when male actors take prime female roles, but the casting suits this super-gay reading.
If the romcom plot is straight as a die, the thoughts are queer as can be. The heart, among other organs, wants what it wants, and Webster sets everyone scampering around the stage in frisky agitation. Eyes fluttering, touches lingering, quick fondle of a statue. People sigh “darling” in an ardent polyamorous tangle.
The dizzy chaps are cute – Nathan Stewart-Jarrett’s Jack in fine fluster, Olly Alexander’s Algy giving good smirk – but it’s their sweethearts who gleam. Kitty Hawthorne’s fanny-fanning Gwendolen and Jessica Whitehurst’s scowling Cecily both tap the production’s libidinous undertow. Their teatime spat is a hilarious rollercoaster of sugar lump aggression and the erotic possibilities of Victoria sponge.
Wilde believed the play “must go like a pistol shot” but here, lines arrive with a leisurely, even laborious, flourish. Even so, the show lives for pleasure, especially in Rae Smith’s designs – lemony drawing room, riotous rose garden, perfectly edible costumes. There’s much side-eye at the audience, and an inspired Hayley Carmichael filches her every scene as a brace of butlers, bone-dry in town and gawpingly bewildered in the country.
It all feels less audacious than at the National. Some performances are gentler – like Shobna Gulati’s sweetly sententious Miss Prism or Fry’s towering dowager, presiding with a lofty twinkle. Where the young people thrum with desire, Fry’s Bracknell reserves her tendresse for matters of the purse: mention a marriage settlement and she practically purrs.
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At Noël Coward theatre, London, until 10 January
