The Importance of Being Earnest

A Staged Reading and Sundowner event

Experience Wilde’s play spoken live in an outdoor space, with some movement and minimal props. Director Geoffrey Leeder’s vision pays homage to the original play to reconnect audiences with the joy of storytelling and being read to, with some surprising contemporary elements to advance the “Wilde” humour.

SYNOPSIS: Algernon and Jack are good friends, who each maintain, as a matter of convenience, different identities depending on whether they are in the town or the country. It therefore becomes especially inconvenient, not to say confusing, when Jack proposes to Algernon’s cousin Gwendolyn under the pseudonym of ‘Ernest’, while Algernon proposes to Jack’s ward Cecily also under the pseudonym of ‘Ernest’. In truth, no one is particularly earnest, except the imperious Lady Bracknell, who takes a dim view of everything.

In The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde rips the covers off Victorian propriety and relishes in the unbridled silliness and snobbery of London’s upper classes.

The Importance of Being Earnest is a Koorliny Arts Centre and Kwinana Industries Council 2023 Performance Season production.