THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST / THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY (1986)

Cast

Plot

The Importance of Being Earnest (1986); this is a good, clear production, in which the repartee flows right along, except for Rupert Frazer, far too stuffy and moral and not nearly hungry enough for Algernon. He becomes a straight man for Jack, in which role Paul McGann, usually a melancholy actor, turns his doleful air into one long, sublimely silly fret. Natalie Ogle is a sweetly fixated Cecily, Amanda Redman has an abundance of energy and in her performance one sees, as Jack correctly does, that she will probably turn into her mother, as whom Joan Plowright has just the right mixture of dottiness and obtuseness. If it had only had a better Algernon....