Hardcore Monty Python fans will recall the team’s mischievous version of Wuthering Heights in which Heathcliff and Catherine declare their love for each other via semaphore flags. Max Webster’s ultra-camp take on Oscar Wilde’s witticisms is so loud, he might as well have given the actors megaphones: almost every line is delivered with a shriek, a shout or an elbow dug into the audience’s ribs. It’s fun at first, but by the end you begin to feel bruised.
At the National last November I was willing to give the venture the benefit of the doubt. The new cast for this transfer to the Noël Coward Theatre, with Stephen Fry as Lady Bracknell, isn’t so easy to warm to. Fry is perfectly fine as the grand old lady (the audience gave him a round of applause when he made his first entrance), but he hasn’t yet acquired the hauteur of the Caribbean matron that Sharon D Clarke brought to the South Bank.
More importantly, you really do miss the subtle comic timing of Hugh Skinner’s incarnation of Jack Worthing. His replacement, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, is a much broader presence. He works up a formidable head of steam opposite Olly Alexander’s Algernon, who is first seen in a colourful frock as he lets rip on a piano. There’s more partying in a curtain call that has cast members waving goodbye, one after the other, in extravagant carnival costumes.
