2 Wilde: Salome and The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde

THE two plays by Oscar Wilde on this double bill could hardly have been more dissimilar.
Salome is an exotic expansion of the Bible’s references to the death of John the Baptist and full of ornate language and decadent behaviour.
The Importance of Being Earnest, by contrast, is one of the wittiest of English comedies, with deliciously drawn characters and cut-and-thrust dialogue that never ceases to amuse as two young men try to woo women who insist that they will only marry someone called Ernest.
Director David Brown’s decision to put abbreviated versions of both on one program as a showcase for second year TAFE acting students produced marvellous entertainment.
Brown used the framing device of a British music hall company staging the plays on an Australian tour in 1900, the year of Wilde’s death. The touring company concept made amusingly credible the casting of women in some men’s roles – and a bearded man in one female role.
Salome in this context became a melodrama, with the repetitive language and seductive and longing glances delivered in styles that could only be called ripe. It wasn’t what Wilde intended, but it worked, giving the cast experience in a stylised form of acting and keeping the audience grinning.
The music hall format was kept to a few gestures and an occasional vocal expression in The Importance of Being Earnest. Cross-casting also contributed to the comedy, with Seth Drury’s lofty Jack Worthing, one of the men assuming the name Ernest, being almost twice as tall as Anna Lambert as his earnest rival Algernon Moncrieff. At the same time, Lambert was convincing as a male. And the bearded Keane Williams, as demure governess Miss Prism, was a hoot in the gentle woman’s climactic encounter with Renee Thomas’s overbearing Lady Bracknell.
In short, Wilde-ly entertaining.

Ken Longworth

Photo: Jenna Sleishman and Anna Danny Lambert in The Importance of Being Earnest (2 Wilde)