Reviews – The Importance of Being Earnest
18 February 2024Reviews of ACT Hub’s gender-bending, cabaret-style, steampunk version of Oscar Wilde’s classic – The Importance of Being Earnest.
March 2024 PRODUCTION
Dec 2023 – PRODUCTION
Dec 2022 PRODUCTION
The Importance of Being Earnest – Australian Arts Review
Fri 9 Dec 2022. Reviewed by Bill Stephens
Director Jarrad West has stripped the play of its period connotations and presented it in a cabaret setting. He’s retained Wilde’s original dialogue, except for anything superfluous to his concept, carefully retaining all the lines you want to hear, and ignoring the gender of his actors when casting. It works a treat…and the result is an evening of sheer theatrical bliss.
Brilliantly conceived and performed production
The Importance of Being Earnest – Canberra Critics Circle
Sat 10 Dec 2022. Reviewed by Peter Wilkins.
Jarrad West’s stunningly imaginative cabaret version of The Importance of Being Earnest is Wilde at his wickedest. West has turned the play into a delectable cabaret production while remaining true to Wilde’s scintillating text and ridiculous but likeable characters.
By partially casting against gender and type, West has stripped back the artifice to reveal the shallowness of Upper class society. Cabaret is the art of exposure and West’s re-imagining exposes the past to reveal the universal present.
A fresh… original and highly entertaining production.