NEWS: The Importance of Being Earnest @ Northern Stage

Image: The Company of The Important of Being Earnest by Mark Senior

It’s 2022, but still if anyone dares include LGBTQIA+ people or people of colour in popular media, especially period pieces, loads of people love to get up in arms… Even though these groups have existed since like, ever. That’s their problem, though, because the English Touring Theatre’s production of infamously Queer writer Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest shouts its inclusivity from the rooftops at Northern Stage from Tuesday 4^th-Saturday 8^th October.

Its all-Black cast consists of exceptional established and up-and-coming talent – including House of the Dragon star Phoebe Campbell in her theatre debut and RuPaul Drag Race UK alumni Daniel Jacob (Vinegar Strokes) as the stiff-upper-lipped Lady Bracknell. This play already pushed the boat out in its heyday, sticking the Victorian equivalent of a middle finger up to trivial social hierarchy and expectations. After all, its central character is a bit of a fibber, the woman of his desires a little shallow, and the culmination of its plot seems to reward these shady actions in Victorian society which was exceedingly concerned with morality.

Wilde’s satirical tale of mistaken identity and petty misgivings continues to translate effortlessly to modern audiences, and retains its subversity even in a modern age that is supposedly more tolerant of the one in which its writer lived and died.

The Importance of Being Earnest is at Northern Stage, Newcastle from Tuesday 4^th-Saturday 8^th October.