The Importance of Being Earnest

The Importance of Being Earnest
By Anton Bentley in cahoots with Mr Oscar Wilde
Presented by Piece of Work Productions

This summer, Piece of Work Productions invites you back to the Fairfield House courtyard for a riotous new staging of Wilde’s masterpiece The Importance of Being Earnest — with cucumber sandwiches, muffins, and mayhem aplenty.

In a dazzling feat of comic invention, just two actors unleash Wilde’s entire cast of dandies, romantics, battle-axes, and debutantes. Jack, Algernon, Cecily, Gwendolen, Lady Bracknell (and of course that handbag) appear in splendid confusion, thanks to rapid-fire costume swaps, split-second entrances, and a dash of improvisation.

Expect Wilde’s celebrated epigrams (“The truth is rarely pure and never simple”) colliding with glorious comic anarchy — pratfalls, audience asides, and verbal duels sharp enough to slice a cucumber sandwich. The result is a laughter-packed evening that honours Wilde’s wit while gleefully tipping it upside down. After all, as Wilde himself noted, “Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow” — and there is nothing shallow about this comedy of mistaken identities, muffins, and matrimony.

This is the kind of joyful chaos audiences have come to expect from Piece of Work Productions’ summer courtyard shows, following smash-hit seasons of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged), The Servant of Two Masters, and The Magic Flute.

So gather your friends, bring a picnic rug or chair, and settle in under the stars. A food truck will be on site, and the Fairfield bar will be open (no BYO). Wilde said, “I can resist everything except temptation.” We recommend you resist nothing and book early.