The Importance of Being Earnest, Harold Pinter Theatre

Oscar Wilde's most quotable play comes to the West End with an all-star cast, headed by RSC director Lucy Bailey. 

The Story...

The Importance of being Earnest was originally given the addendum ‘A Trivial Comedy for Serious People’, referring to the frivolity with which it portrays marriage. Comedy ensues when two upstanding gentlemen adopt fictitious identities in order to woo the women they love...

Jack Worthing has being pretending to be called Earnest because, as everyone tells him “You are the most earnest looking person I have ever seen in my life” and because his amour Gwendolyn finds it so attractive. Upon learning this, Algernon adopts the same approach, calling himself Earnest in order to court Cecily Cardew, who claims “it has always been a girlish dream of mine to love someone whose name was Earnest.” But away from the city, in a country manor, truths about Jack Worthing’s past threaten to come to light— not least, the identity of a black leather handbag...

The People...

Martin Jarvis, and Nigel Havers have reunited after more than 30 years to return to the roles of Jack and Algernon after having tremendous success in Peter Hall ’s production at the National Theatre . They were perfectly cast then and it’ll be fascinating to see how they approach the roles now. Jarvis is the dulcet tones behind countless BBC audiobooks and voiceovers, and Havers is a small screen  regular, appearing in Downton Abbey and also the film Chariots of Fire. 

Theatre doyenne and star of BBC series, I, Claudius, Sian Phillips will make a fearsome (and pretty alluring) Lady Bracknall. Gwendolyn is played by Cherie Lunghi and Cecily by Christine Kavanagh.

Director Lucy Bailey is younger than any of her cast, but has her fair share of theatrical experience. At 17 she boldly wrote to Samuel Beckett asking to stage his dramatic poem Lessness and he gave her permission. Since then she has directed great operas at Glyndeborne and the ENO and several Shakespeare plays with the RSC — including the acclaimed and faint-making recent production of Titus Andronicus.