The Importance of Being Earnest

Wilde’s ‘trivial comedy for serious people’ is his most brilliant play, bursting with his trademark one-liners. Jack Worthington is in love with prim-and-proper Gwendolyn Fairfax. His friend Algernon is in love with Cecily Cardew. But both Gwendolyn and Cecily are determinedly in love with someone called Ernest. Throw in the magnificently imposing Lady Bracknell, some cucumber sandwiches and a nanny with a dubious story about a handbag, and the result is a comedy as fresh and funny as when it was first performed in 1895.