A classic comedy, a star performer (Patricia Routledge), a blandly pretty set: initially Christopher Morahan's production, which originated at Chichester in 1999, looks like a safe Sussex transfer. But, in the course of an Antipodean tour, it has acquired three Australian actresses and it is they who bring a touch of salt and sassiness to Wilde's familiar masterpiece.
About Routledge's Lady Bracknell I feel fairly neutral. At first in her interrogation of Mr Worthing she lapses into a singsong contralto that smothers much of the wit. The one point she clearly makes is that Lady Bracknell is as much motivated by money as by pedigree. She builds on that in her second eruption by reminding us that Aunt Augusta is a social arriviste who had no fortune when she married and who spies in Cecily a financially advantageous catch for her nephew. I just wish Routledge made Lady B's upward mobility the key to her whole performance.
But what this production latches on to is that, in Wilde's play, the women steer the action. It would be pushing it to call Wilde's Gilbertian fantasy with social undercurrents explicitly feminist. But, unlike Orton, Wilde was no misogynist. He clearly liked women, and when his female roles are strongly cast, as here, you realise that his play is a subtle tribute to their wit, grit and determination.
The key performance comes from the Sydney-trained Essie Davis as Gwendolen. This is no wilting violet but a woman determined to get her man. When she announces that the name of Ernest "produces vibrations", her whole body shudders with sexual delight and at one point she grabs Mr Worthing and kisses him with undisguised ferocity. But Davis also reminds one of Chekhov's point that, when someone "spends the least possible number of movements over some definite action, that is grace". In the rural scenes she combines a fastidious physical economy with a clear-eyed matrimonial certainty. It is, in Aussie parlance, a beaut of a performance.
This note of sexual single-mindedness is echoed in the Cecily of Sarah Kants. She winds in Algernon like an angler securing a catch, and trades verbal blows with Gwendolen with a tart crispness that belies the character's youth. Even Beverley Dunn's Miss Prism eyes up Canon Chasuble with a romantic eagerness that reminds one of the governess's early devotion to the three-volume novel.
The men are more traditionally played, with Theo Fraser Steele's airy Algernon balanced by the sober gravity of Alistair Petrie's Mr Worthing. But clearly something has happened to this production in the course of a long tour. What starts out as a routine revival of a comic classic ends up by striking a stylish blow for feminism.
Until March 24. Box office: 020-7836 8888. A version of this review appeared in later editions of yesterday's paper.
