Movie Review: The Importance of Being Earnest

The Importance of Being Earnest is brilliantly performed in this version by NT Theatre. Photo / Supplied

Oscar Wilde's 1895 classic comedy of manners is so well-known that it risks sounding like a dictionary of quotations.

The danger is that the writer's famous paradoxical epigrams ("Divorces are made in heaven"; "It's like washing one's clean linen in public"; "If the lower orders don't set us a good example, what on earth is the use of them") will be delivered with a kind of leaden deliberation, like sinkers on lines dropped to fish for laughs.

This Broadway production by Roundabout Theatre, filmed as it happened and played here on the NT Live model, quite avoids that danger by maintaining a pace about halfway between fizzing and breakneck.

It's a very old-fashioned staging (I mean that as a compliment) with actors strung in a line across the set and pouncing on each other's cues at a volume that seldom drops below a bellow but delivering the lines with such perfect diction that not a word is missed.

Lady Bracknell (played by director Bedford - yes, a man) is the sole, delightful exception to this rule. The show's obvious centrepiece, s/he devours each line - and, better still, each silence - with the relish of a gourmet.

Within a few seconds of taking the stage he has destroyed the reputation of every woman who ever took the role. You have to see him to believe how good he is.

If you've never seen Earnest, there could be no better place to start; if you're a fan of the play, you should probably make this the last time you see it - nothing else could measure up.

Stars: 5/5
Cast: Brian Bedford, Charlotte Parry, Sara Topham, Santino Fontana, David Furr
Director:Brian Bedford
Running time:165 mins inc interval
Rating:Exempt
Verdict: Pitch-perfect

The film has strictly limited sessions at Bridgeway, Lido Hamilton, Matakana, Rialto Tauranga and Rialto Newmarket from today until June 25.