The Importance of Being Earnest review: Ncuti Gatwa is fabulous fun in an Oscar Wilde retelling

Oscar Wilde hardly hid the queer subtext in his frivolous drawing room comedy – designed to enjoyably scandalise Victorian audiences without quite saying the word “gay” – but director Max Webster’s bold, brash and beautifully-cast production blows away every trace of wink-wink nudge-nudge subtlety from this classic. Ncuti Gatwa plays a gorgeously flamboyant Algernon who peacocks in silk corsets and ruffled negligees between scenes. Sharon D Clarke shines as his formidable aunt Lady Bracknell, her Caribbean tones dripping with disapproval as his shenanigans upset the teacups.

The genius of The Importance of Being Earnest is the way it takes the painful reality of life in the closet – with all its fake names, flimsy alibis and terror of discovery – and turns it into something flip and fun. Algernon pretends to be visiting an ailing friend called Bunbury whenever he wants to escape the stultifying world of upper-class respectability. Likewise, his friend Jack (Hugh Skinner) has invented a convenient wicked older brother, Earnest, as a cover for his own naughtiness. Their deceptions, however, unravel as they begin to court two young women: Cecily (an enjoyably stroppy Eliza Scanlen) and Gwendolen (a rebellious Ronkẹ Adékoluẹjo). Clarke’s masterful Lady Bracknell anchors this silliness, looking as impassive and fierce as the sun in her bright yellow bonnet as these heavenly bodies cavort around her.

Webster’s production is brilliant at slapstick and visual gags, tugging at every possible innuendo with schoolboy eagerness. When muffins are eaten at tea, Cecily and Gwendolen’s faces descend sapphically towards one another’s laps – and when Algernon and Jack speak of “Bunburying”, it has never sounded quite so much like “buggery”.

Still, when you turn the subtext into text, you’re left with nothing below the surface, and sometimes proceedings here slip into the territory of an especially brainless panto. At least Webster adds a light dusting of Marxism to Wilde’s text, with the odd line implying that the play’s silliness is the result of moral and mental decay that comes with being part of the idle property-owning classes. Any social commentary, though, is rapidly thrown aside as Wilde’s steel-reinforced plot moves with ruthless efficiency towards its happy conclusion.

What lingers here are the images, more than the words – perhaps because Wilde’s famous aphorisms sound especially glib when delivered with vigour, rather than their more usual laconic detachment.

Designer Rae Smith works wonders, creating lavish panelled interiors that act as a staidly traditional backdrop for fantastic costumes: Gatwa wears a gloriously saucy ruffled transparent white blouse under his more classic lounge suit, and Clarke’s resolve is stiffened with boldly patterned neon brocades. An ornate proscenium arch frames the stage, with a bouquet of limp, phallic carrots at its centre – possibly a winking reference to the rotten vegetables that the homophobic father of Wilde’s lover Lord Alfred Douglas threatened to throw at Earnest’s opening night. History is worn oh-so-lightly here, and it’s impossible not to get swept up in the fun.

‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ is at the National Theatre until 25 January 2025. There will be an NT Live broadcast on 20 Feb; nationaltheatre.org.uk