Mask Theatre

Following their recent successes with The Pillowman, Jerusalem, Pygmalion and One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Mask Theatre brings Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest to the Key Theatre main stage.

The Importance of Being Earnest is a side-splittingly funny story of courtships, betrothals and confused identities, in which two young men – Jack Worthing and Algernon Moncrieff – pursue two young women who are both determined to marry someone called Ernest. Set in fashionable London society, the play is characterised by its wit, and artifice.

The play was described by its author, as being ‘by a butterfly for butterflies’ and is subtitled – A Trivial Comedy for Serious People. It was first performed on St Valentine’s Day in 1895 and was to be Wilde’s last play.

Holding a mirror up to Wilde’s own class this riotous comedy pokes fun at the absurdity of manners and customs and brings a clutch of fantastic characters to life. Enter Lady Bracknell, a mouthpiece for Wilde’s absurd statements about the decorum of the day, and let the fun begin!