In Oscar Wilde’s 'The Importance of Being Earnest', cucumber sandwiches somehow become a matter of social importance, falling in love appears strangely dependent on first names, and romance itself seems governed almost entirely by appearances.
First performed in 1895, Wilde’s celebrated comedy arrived during the height of Victorian society, an era obsessed with status, reputation, marriage and rigid social etiquette. Yet beneath the polished manners, endless tea rituals and drawing-room civility, Wilde was quietly satirising the very world his characters were so desperately trying to preserve.
More than a century later, State Theatre Company South Australia’s latest production, directed by Petra Kalive and assistant director Maeve Mhairi MacGregor, proves the play has lost none of its absurdity or relevance, leaning fully into the chaos of a society where appearances matter far more than honesty, and where romance itself often feels less like genuine affection and more like a carefully managed social transaction.
What makes 'The Importance Of Being Earnest' so enduring, however, is that the comedy never exists purely for the joke itself. Wilde uses humour as the vehicle to smuggle much larger ideas into the room encompassing morality, identity, class, romance and the endless performances people construct to survive socially. The deeper the play disappears into ridiculous misunderstandings, invented relatives and increasingly impractical engagement plans, the more sharply Wilde exposes the uncomfortable truth sitting underneath it all; society has always rewarded performance, particularly when everybody politely agrees to pretend otherwise.
Kathryn Sproul’s visual world of elegantly-curated costumes with a touch of edginess, make-up and nostalgic garden-party set design, all warmly illuminated by Katie Sfetkidis, leans beautifully into the tension between charm and farce sitting at the heart of Wilde’s writing. Framed by woven florals on a wooden outline, vintage furniture and retro drawing-room interiors, the stage carries a dreamlike theatrical nostalgia, while a dimly lit music room behind the skeletal door, drifting between Erik Satie’s Gymnopédies and Strauss’ Blue Danube deepens the production’s strange blend of romance, performance and old-world grandeur.
Amid the production’s fluid, shape-shifting gender dynamics, Teddy Dunn’s Jack Worthing becomes the play’s reluctant centre of gravity, attempting to maintain a sense of composure while the world around him steadily unravels. Constantly shifting between responsibility and reinvention, Jack attempts to maintain entirely different versions of himself depending on which social setting he occupies. Beneath his polite composure sits a man perpetually one minor inconvenience away from complete emotional collapse, particularly as his carefully constructed lies begin multiplying faster than he can manage them. The role leaves plenty of room for Dunn to balance restraint with mounting panic, as Wilde steadily traps Jack inside a social disaster entirely of his own making.
Opposite him, Algernon Moncrieff treats life itself like a recreational activity with very few consequences. Effortlessly witty, self-indulgent and armed with some of Wilde’s sharpest lines, Anna Lindner executes the character and moves through the play with the confidence of somebody who believes honesty is useful mainly when it improves the story. Whether he is avoiding responsibility, mocking marriage or casually eating somebody else’s cucumber sandwiches, the character thrives on impeccable timing and theatrical charm and Anna Lindner embodies all of that. Beneath the endless one-liners, however, sits Wilde’s ongoing cynicism toward romance, status and the strange performances people maintain to appear respectable.
Gwendolen Fairfax and Cecily Cardew, meanwhile, become far more than passive romantic figures within Wilde’s world. Beneath the exaggerated politeness, carefully performed etiquette and wildly idealised notions of romance, sits a pair of women just as committed to fantasy and performance as the men attempting to impress them. Their growing rivalry, particularly once questions of identity and engagement begin spiralling out of control, transforms ordinary conversations into delightfully passive-aggressive social warfare.
Connor Pullinger’s Gwendolen proves one of the production’s undeniable standouts, captivating the audience from the moment he enters the stage. Dressed in a striking cobalt-blue ensemble complete with a flowing pleated tulle skirt and lavishly stylised tailoring, Pullinger embodies the character with a perfect balance of elegance, vanity and comic precision, delivering some of the evening’s biggest laughs with effortless confidence. Opposite him, Pia Gillings’ Cecily brings a bright energy and charm to the production, balancing youthful romanticism with sharp comedic instinct. Though early in her career, a pretty-in-pink Gillings already carries the kind of stage presence suggesting a promising future ahead. Together, the pair navigate Wilde’s increasingly chaotic world with impeccable timing, allowing ordinary conversations about courtship and identity to spiral into some of the production’s funniest and most captivating moments.
One of the production’s true standouts – and perhaps the element that most clearly defines it as something uniquely its own – is the original score composed by Geoffrey Crowther and Carla Lippis. Appearing throughout the play as the mysterious Merriman, and Lane, Lippis weaves musical interludes between scenes that give the production a seamless artistic rhythm, tying Wilde’s chaos together with surprising emotional fluidity. Having previously commanded the stage in projects such as 'Mondo Psycho' and successful rock tribute production '27 Club', Lippis brings an unmistakable presence to the role, opening and closing the play with perfectly timed theatrical grandeur. Her voice is extraordinary, while her performance carries the same magnetic confidence and precision that have long made her such a compelling live performer.
Then there is Lady Bracknell, performed by Glenda Linscott, arguably Wilde’s greatest comic creation and the human embodiment of Victorian social authority itself. Coldly assessing marriage proposals, family backgrounds and social standing with the energy of somebody conducting an elite government interrogation, she moves through the play like a perfectly dressed force of nature. Much of the comedy comes from the complete seriousness with which she delivers increasingly outrageous judgments, often treating romance as though it were a legal dispute requiring immediate investigation. The role demands absolute command of timing, presence and vocal precision, while simultaneously exposing the absurdity of the social structures Wilde was satirising in the first place.
There is also a lingering sense throughout the play that Wilde himself exists somewhere within all of them. The romantic, the cynic, the liar, the idealist and the social strategist all collide across the stage, almost as though Wilde is scattering fragments of his own personality into each character and allowing them to argue with one another through comedy. Much like Shakespeare before him, Wilde understands that humour often reveals human behaviour far more honestly than tragedy ever could. The audience may spend the evening laughing at invented brothers, collapsing courtships and drawing-room chaos, but beneath the farce sits something surprisingly sharp about the strange performances people construct for love, acceptance and survival.
Revisiting 'Earnest' now also carries a strange bittersweetness knowing what happened to Wilde shortly after the play’s hugely successful premiere in 1895. Audiences adored the comedy, yet within months Wilde’s life had unravelled into scandal, imprisonment and eventual exile, all while the very society he mocked so brilliantly turned against him. Suddenly, all the fake identities, secret lives and carefully-managed social performances inside the play begin to feel far less ridiculous. Wilde may have filled the stage with absurd courtships, invented brothers and arguments over sandwiches, but underneath the comedy sits a writer who understood all too well how dangerous social performance could become when society demanded it at all costs.
Yet for all its cynicism, 'The Importance Of Being Earnest' still arrives at an ending where truth, however accidentally, eventually forces its way to the surface. Jack’s tangled double life collapses into revelation, hidden identities are exposed, and somehow, against all logic, everything works out anyway – even if Wilde leaves a few deeply questionable family connections sitting quietly in the background. Perhaps that is the play’s final joke. Beneath all the deception, performance and social absurdity, Wilde seems less interested in punishing his characters than exposing how impossible sincerity becomes inside a society built almost entirely on appearances.
With an entirely homegrown cast at its centre, who the hell wouldn't want to go to South Australia? The production certainly proves there is something in this city worth seeing – and the result is far from the lacklustre little outpost the characters jokingly make it out to be.
