The Importance of Being Earnest

The most renowned and wittiest of Oscar Wilde’s comedies, The Importance of Being Earnest ridicules Victorian sensibilities and is still strikingly relevant to this day. This full-cast audio adaptation featuring Tim Brooke-Taylor as Lady Bracknell is unique yet at the same time reassuringly familiar, with wonderful performances from the Offstage Theatre Group.

The play itself is the story of two single gentlemen who have taken to bending the truth in order to put some excitement into their lives. John ‘Jack’ Worthing has invented a brother, Earnest, whom he uses as an excuse to leave his dull life behind to visit Gwendolyn Fairfax. When learning of this subterfuge, Algernon ‘Algy’ Montcrieff decides to take the name Earnest when visiting Jack Worthing’s young and beautiful ward, Cecily Cardew. The pair struggle to keep up with their own stories, and their adventures in romance begin to go awry when they end up together in the country. This leads to a tale of deception and disguise that becomes more and more tangled as the play goes on.