The Importance of Being Oscar by Michael Mac Liammoir at Jermyn Street Theatre 28 March to 19 April

‘Oscar Wilde back in London’s west end’ ★★★★

I have always been of the opinion that a man who desires to get married should know

either everything or nothing. Which do you know? 

- Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest.

The best things about Michael Mac Liammoir’s The Importance of Being Oscar, first performed in Dublin in 1960, were the long extracts from Oscar Wilde’s work, showcasing his extraordinary range, from a delightful, insubstantial comedy of manners like The Importance of Being Ernest, to the grim hopelessness of The Ballad of Reading Gaol.

And it is here that this new production from Original Theatre is at its best. Against the simplest of sets – a circle of light designed to ensure focus on the one actor - Alastair Whatley performs these extracts to understated perfection. 

Even if, like me, you know the exchange between Ernest Worthing and Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest by heart, you will still enjoy Whatley’s performance of it, including the line for which the late Edith Evans will forever be associated: “A handbag!” 

Later, as Wilde’s life and his work darkens, come The Ballad of Reading Goal, for which Whatley stands, utterly still, only the top half of him lit, and tells us in a flat, even voice about a man about to be hanged for murdering his lover – “For each man kills the thing he loves.” He reads the poem brilliantly. Each word is like a dagger, the more so because it is spoken without sharpness. The night I saw it, you could have heard a pin drop in the cramped 70-seat Jermyn Street auditorium. 

In addition to these gems, Whatley offers us a splendidly observed rendition of an exchange from Lady Windermere’s Fan between Lord Wootton and his manservant, and a searing record of unhappiness and resentment in Wilde’s letter to his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, after Wilde’s release from prison.

There are some lines which Wilde enthusiasts await with expectation, and generally we are not disappointed. Is the dying Wilde going to look at the dreadful wallpaper in his cheap Paris hotel room and murmer: “One of us has to go”? Bless you, of course he is. 

This really is a play of two halves, like Wilde’s life: before and after he was sent to prison for two years with hard labour, and not permitted to see his children again, which was society’s punishment for what he himself christened “the love that dare not speak its name.” I was left wishing that he had been able to glimpse even the beginning of the revolution in society’s attitudes, and to appreciate the important part in it played by his own life and work. 

Whatley and director Michael Fentiman understand that less is often more, that you do not need to raise your voice or weep to express emotion, and they know the value of stillness. A monologue asks a lot of an actor, for the audience has only one voice to hear all evening. Whatley is up to the challenge. His performance is one of masterly restraint.

Photography: Marc Brenner

The Importance of Being Oscar

BY MICHEáL MAC LIAMMóIR.

DIRECTED BY MICHAEL FENTIMAN.

PERFORMED BY ALASTAIR WHATLEY 

Jermyn Street Theatre

28 March - 19 April 2025

Tickets  

An Original Theatre and Reading Rep Theatre Co-Production