But the production was colorful and well-acted by all. Lady Bracknell, the real star character of the show is often played in a campy manner (or sometimes by a man in drag). Sharon D. Clarke plays her a bit more realistically as someone who is ostentatiously used to having power over others and getting her way. Hugh Skinner (Jack/Ernest—the standing man in white in the photo above) looks and acts exactly like a young monied man of his time. Ncuti Gatwa as Algernon gives a very queer reading of the part, to the point where his sudden attraction to Cecily barely registers. But he is fun, and his character largely steals the show from Jack, who is sort of the title character (his name actually being Ernest is a plotpoint). Ronke Adekoluejo tries a bit too hard to toughen up the character of Gwendolen, and Eliza Scanlen, in mostly underplaying, is sometimes in danger of being disappearing.
I generally think that colorblind casting is a good thing. Here, Algernon, Lady Bracknell and Gwendolen are played by Black actors, which brings a Bridgerton tone to the play (realistically, there is a vanishingly small possibility that these characters would have been Black in the Victorian era). It makes mincemeat of one of the last plot revelations, but generally, the casting works. I should add that I have never been able to buy the ridiculous conceit of a woman assuming she can only be attracted to someone of a specific name (Gwendolen to Ernest). It's so stupid, it almost makes me mad—couldn't Oscar Wilde have thought of a better device? But the play has so many good laugh lines, it's hard not to just give in. (Pictured just above are Skinner and Gatwa.)
