Panto season has started early this year. This West End transfer of the classic Victorian comedy adds splashes of colour, dancing, and contemporary pop music to Oscar Wilde’s romantic comedy of errors. It’s huge knockabout fun. Though you might need to wear sunglasses as some of the costumes are so dazzlingly bright. 

The two male leads are Olly Alexander, who is nimble and dandyish as the worldly Algernon, advising his friend Jack (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, loudly charismatic) on the perfect life hack. The secret of happiness, he explains, is having two identities, one for the town and one for the country. Fun for a young Victorian bachelor is all about facades and double lives. This farcical name-switching however, lands most of the cast in hot water when everyone collides. It’s a skilful storyline that bridges the gap between Shakespeare’s comedies and Alan Ayckbourn’s domestic set-ups.

The women they are entangled with are Cecily (Jessica Whitehurst) and, one of the highlights, Gwendolen (Kitty Hawthorne), who seems permanently hatted and horny. They have their own comedic stand-out moment involving a Victoria sponge and some repressed lesbian lust. The queer subtext of Wilde’s work is never far from the surface in this pink-tinged version. In fact it is frequently in your face.

No expense is spared in both the tailoring and the casting. The big name is Stephen Fry, who takes on the Lady Bracknell role previously played in this iteration by Sharon D Clarke. Fry, who was born to do Wilde, is every bit as camply imperious as you would expect, whether complaining over the absence of promised cucumber sandwiches or bellowing his trademark “a handbag” line.

The strong cast, directed by Max Webster, also includes Hugh Dennis as provincial vicar Reverend Canon Chasuble and Shobna Gulati as Miss Prism, who doesn't do much until a pivotal moment towards the finishl. Hayley Carmichael steals every scene as a couple of different town/country servants - there is more than a hint of Mrs Overall serving tea to Cecily and Gwendolen during a country garden scene there’s a deliciously daft gag involving various members of the cast struggling to negotiate the sloped astroturf.

Proceedings end with a completely gratuitous pastel-shaded, big-costumed dance number which is so over the top kitsch you almost expect Julian Clary and RuPaul to sashay on together. Considering it was written well over a century ago most of the gags still work, even though times are diffferent now. Sexuality doesn’t have to be so coded, which does make this feel like a period piece. But an intermittently spectacular one.

Until January 10. noelcowardtheatre.co.uk

Picture: Stephen Fry as Lady Bracknell in the West End transfer of The Importance of Being Earnest © Marc Brenner

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