The Importance of Being Earnest review

The National Theatre's new production of The Importance of Being Earnest makes a strong case for it as the funniest play ever written.

Oscar Wilde's 1895 comedy farce has so many classic quotable quips it's the proverbial embarrassment of riches which – despite a length here of two hours and 45 minutes including an interval – breezes by in a blizzard of bon mots.

Wilde dubbed the fourth of his drawing-room plays 'a trivial comedy for serious people' and it delights in the trivial issues faced by its cast of characters.

Algernon Moncrieff and Jack Worthing are well-to-do young men who pursue a couple of young ladies by using fake names and made-up friends or relatives under the scornful eye of the formidable Lady Bracknell – who is mother to Gwendolen, the girl Jack is betrothed to, as Algernon is busy wooing heiress Cecily.

Plotwise that's about it, but Wilde is less concerned with story than he is about the mischief and mayhem that ensues from the assumed identities and hard-held principles (Gwendolen will only marry a man if he's named Ernest) that get these moneyed folk into all sorts of scrapes.

They don't talk like real people. They speak in witticisms, non-sequiturs, epithets and such nonsenses as 'To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune, to lose both looks like carelessness'. That line is delivered by a stony-faced Sharon D. Clarke, who makes Lady Bracknell her own in a performance that should see her dominate awards season. There have been countless Lady Bracknells before her but, fashioned as an African matriarch, Clarke is startlingly fresh and her delivery of the legendary 'A handbag?' isn't the usual expression of disbelief but rather one of repulsion.

Ncuti Gatwa, whose star is on the rise thanks to Sex Education and Doctor Who, is a mischievous Algernon, whose invention of a sick friend named Bunbury as an excuse to swerve commitment is a metaphor for misbehaviour. Gatwa brings a playfulness to the part that rubs off on the rest of the cast.

Ronkẹ Adékọluẹ́jọ́ is a lascivious Gwendolen, Eliza Scanlon is a flighty Eliza, and Hugh Skinner is a whirligig of physical comedy as a Jack who finds it impossible to sit still.

The same could be said of director Max Webster's take on the material, which gets a bit manic at times. There are jarring additions, too, like a prologue where Ncuti plays the piano in a bright pink dress and same-sex flirtations which highlight a queer subtext that is better served subtly.

Having characters hum contemporary pop songs also feels like silliness for the sake of it, but when the production sticks to Wilde's wonderful words and the hilarity of his finely-tuned farce it's glorious.

The Importance of Being Earnest is at the National Theatre, London, until 25 January 2025.