Garsington Wilde Opera: Drag Bracknell, Piano on Stilts
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- Jack Furness directed a new Garsington Opera production of Gerald Barry's "The Importance of Being Earnest," adding a grand piano on stilts, a kangaroo that "meets a nasty end," an enormous chaise longue-cum-slide that suffers one of the play's explosions at the dinner interval, a dirt floor with a working hose, and a herd of miniature cows.
- Henry Waddington played Lady Bracknell in drag — blunt grey bob, lipstick, and beard — first in a trouser suit and later in what the reviewer calls "Bismarck-goes-dominatrix," complete with shiny latex cape, military helmet, and a gun kept in a "Thatcherite handbag."
- Hannah Wolfe's costume designs include Algernon in silk PJs with a bowtie, Gwendolen in ultra-structured dresses riffing on 1890s silhouettes, Miss Prism in walking trousers and sensible shoes with her Victorian updo, and Cecily in hysterically frilled uniformly pink outfits.
- The ensemble cast of singing actors included Seán Boylan as Algernon, Zahid Siddiqui as Jack, Holly Brown as Gwendolen, Jennifer France's "squeaking and shrilling" soprano Cecily, Susan Bickley as Miss Prism, Kevin Whately as Dr Chasuble, and Peter Lidbetter as the long-suffering butler, whose plate-smashing the review calls "a masterpiece of comic timing."
- Douglas Boyd conducted a subset of the Philharmonia Orchestra — positioned on stage throughout — in what the review describes as a "high-definition account" of Barry's score, "sharply mimetic humour and all."
Why it matters: The review's verdict that this Garsington staging proves Barry's opera has achieved "life beyond the premiere" is the material development: it signals the work has been absorbed into the active repertoire rather than fading after its 2011 debut. For Garsington and the Philharmonia subset under Boyd, staging it on-stage with Furness's visual inventions stakes a claim that this 1890s satire has commercial and artistic legs beyond novelty.
