Review Roundup: THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST Opens in the West End

Don't miss national treasure and Poirot star David Suchet as the formidable Lady Bracknell in Oscar Wilde's much loved masterpiece The Importance of Being Earnest, which opens tonight, 1 July 2015 at the Vaudeville Theatre London.

Directed by Adrian Noble, (Amadeus, The King's Speech, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang) Wilde's superb satire on Victorian manners is one of the funniest plays in the English language - the delightful repartee and hilarious piercing of hypocrisy and pomposity can still make you laugh out loud. Two bachelor friends, the adorable dandy Algernon Moncrieff (Philip Cumbus - regular player at Shakespeare's Globe) and the utterly reliable John Worthing J.P., (Downton Abbey's Michael Benz) lead double lives to court the attentions of the exquisitely desirable Gwendolyn Fairfax (Emily Barber) and Cecily Cardew (Imogen Doel). The gallants must then grapple with the riotous consequences of their deceptions, and with the formidable Lady Bracknell.

Let's see what the critics had to say...

Dominic Cavendish, The Telegraph: ...while Suchet acquits himself entirely admirably in a part habitually played by leading ladies of high renown (Evans, Dench, Smith), the bulk of the evening, directed by former RSC chief Adrian Noble, is as much a trial as poor Oscar's courtroom ordeals. Watching Suchet in action, I was put in mind of some magnificent figurehead on an ancient sailing-ship that seems to be strangely listing. The dramatic vessel itself, tightly structured and sealed with aphoristic wit, is pretty much unsinkable. And yet with many of the crew here resorting to sometimes frantic measures to keep things buoyant, tacking this way and that in terms of tone, chasing laughs as one might elusive gusts of air, the main impression is of something barely sea-worthy.

Paul Taylor, The Independent: ...it comes as a bit of a shock when David Suchet (of Poirot and straight classical theatre renown) sweeps in with a bosom like the prow of a battleship and a glare that could paralyse a stampede of elephants in heat in Adrian Noble's highly entertaining production. The dreadnought dowager takes, you notice, quite a few lumps of sugar in her tea. She certainly needs the energy boost for I have never seen the role played live with a more formidable poised ferocity nor heard Bracknell's ex cathedra utterances delivered with such swooping dogmatism. This is a Bracknell that, at times, has an amused awareness of her effect on people...But there are also hints, in Suchet's rich portrayal, that -- just as Catholic converts become the biggest sticklers about doctrine -- Lady Bracknell has all the beady-eyed, rabid snobbery of the social upstart...Warmly recommended.

Michael Billington, The Guardian: [David Suchet] gives, as you would expect, a majestically funny performance in an Adrian Noble production that plays up Wilde's farcical exuberance at the expense of his running commentary on Victorian life. As Lady Bracknell, Suchet does not so much enter a room as occupy it totally. He is also a master, like Donald Sinden, of the frozen stare of disdain...This is a Lady Bracknell who combines a calculating mind with a sense of life's absurdity...The play offers a flow of insights into marriage, money, morals and, most especially, a society that maintains a facade of hypocritical respectability. For that reason, I think Michael Benz could lend Jack Worthing, who leads a carefully planned double-life, a touch more ostentatious gravitas. But the virtue of the production is that it presents us with real people rather thanepigram-spouting puppets...this is a thoroughly enjoyable production and, at its centre, lies a superb performance by Suchet that reminds us that even Lady Bracknell contains a certain impishness beneath her elegantly frocked hauteur.

Mark Shenton, The Stage: Suchet - with the attitude and determination of a battleship sailing into choppy waters - sets his face and body in full gorgon battleaxe mould, and makes a harsh but convincing portrait that feels like it is equal parts Margaret Thatcher and Patricia Routledge. In a theatrical landscape where roles for mature older women are short on the ground, it may be a little perverse to give the challenge to a man, not least one who is best known for heavy and/or tragic roles, not his comic ones. But once disbelief is suspended - as it must be in any case for the convoluted coincidences of this play - it doesn't so much disrupt as extend the play's ready embrace of extremities in its quaint portrait of high society life.

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