The Importance of Being… Earnest? will play at the Beck Theatre in Hayes as part of its forthcoming UK tour.
After a critically acclaimed Edinburgh Fringe run in 2022, and a previous London Fringe theatre run, the production will have a full run at the Edinburgh Fringe 2023 before embarking on a 37-week tour, beginning in September and running until July 2024.
It will run at the Beck Theatre from October 12-14, 2023.
In this riotous twist on a much-loved classic the show opens to looming disaster; the actor playing Ernest in Oscar Wilde’s famed farce fails to arrive on cue. In a monumental effort to ‘save the show’, a real audience member is quickly cast in the lead role.
But this impetuous recasting sets off a hilarious chain of events that, one-by-one, renders the rest of the cast unable to continue their performances.
As more audience members are encouraged to step into the spotlight, led backstage for costume and make-up, impromptu auditions, the painting of portraits, the chanting of mantras; doing whatever’s needed to help the show go on, an absurd controlled madness ensues – until it feels as if there are almost as many audience members in the cast as there are in the … audience.
Developed alongside the company’s flagship open-rehearsal initiative, where audiences are invited into the rehearsal room to participate in the creative process, the show is written by Josh King, Simon Paris and Say It Again, Sorry?, and is directed by Simon Paris.