Oscar Wilde’s comedy of manners and mores The Importance of Being Earnest, the first play in Nottingham Playhouse’s autumn season, gets under way this week.
It’s directed by the theatre’s artistic director Giles Croft who says, “Having directed Private Lives by Noël Coward last year, I’m very excited to be working on this great play by this other master of English language comedy.
“As so many people are now engaging in some form of online ‘bunburying’, the idea of creating an imagined world of freedom from constraints feels as fresh as ever.”
The cast features Joanna Brookes, who appeared in The Physicists at the Donmar Warehouse, as Lady Bracknell; Sam Callis whose credits include Hay Fever at the Noël Coward Theatre and Game of Thrones on Sky Atlantic as Jack Worthing; Hywel Morgan as Algernon; Rokhsaneh Ghawam-Shahidi as Gwendolen; Claire Storey as Miss Prism; John Elkington as Canon Chasuble; and Robert Benfield as Lane and Merriman.
Anjli Mohindra, born at West Bridgford in Nottingham, who appeared in The Sarah Jane Adventures on BBC1, plays Cecily.
The Importance of Being Earnest runs from Friday (31 August) until Saturday, 22 September. Press night is Tuesday, 4 September.
Nottingham Playhouse’s show is complemented by a studio production of Lady Bracknell’s Confinement, Paul Doust’s darkly humorous exposé of the terrible consequences of a lifetime of deceit, from Monday, 17 September until Saturday, 22 September.
John Elkington plays Lady Augusta Bracknell (nee Fairfax). Stephanie Sirr directs.