YOU MIGHT NOT believe that a comedy about social manners in Victorian England, written in the very late and extremely conservative 19th century can sizzle to hilarity and uber-gay life in 2025. What Max Webster and his fabulous cast does to Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, will put glitter in your step and a smile on your face for a long time. It was performed for the National Theatre in London in February of this year, but South African film goers are privileged to be able to have the best seats in the house, as it screens at selected Ster Kinekor outlets around the country between 30 August and 2 September 2025.

It’s a crazy tale of young women who fall in love with men for the simple promise of their Christian names, and young men dominated by a lust for life which can spill over into puce frocks and joyous skipping around the room, when the need prevails. In a 1970-published version of the play, theatre veteran Sir John Gielgud warned against ramping up the madcap element of this work too high, speculating that that would make it silly, if not overdrawn.

But the times, they have changed. Or have they? Webster is unabashed in his delight for this tale, which, if you hone in on its idiosyncrasies and outraged criticisms of society’s hypocrisies, is one splayed around a pun and all the complexities of being in love, being loved and getting permission to make love, from an elder, in a delicious way. It takes Wilde’s personal narrative of being queer in a world that was homophobic to the hilt but raucously rude behind closed doors, and crisps it with empathy and an over-the-top element that is as restrained as the iconic Terence Stamp 1994 film Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. And that’s just the prologue and the curtain call!

More than that, however, it is the fresh directness of the set, and the articulate and unequivocal performances of the cast – in their bustles, snakeskin suits and all – that make it sing with a mix of cynicism, middle-finger-to-society chutzpah and sheer joy. Sharon D. Clarke takes on the role of Aunt Augusta/Lady Bracknell with the kind of muster that South African audiences may have been privileged to see when Albert Silindokuhle Ibokwe Khoza played Queen Gertrude in Dada Masilo’s Hamlet of 2024. Indeed, it’s a role that seems to be made in heaven for a performer who is not afraid to grind her voice, flaunt the bigness of her presence – or indeed, be in drag. Sir Stephen Fry reprises the role in another season of the work, during September at the West End Noël Coward in London.

The work is sheer delight from beginning to end. Evocative of Shakespeare’s comedies which offer tricks and lies in the gender department, it’s given a contemporary edge with an understanding of intimacy in movement and snatches of song from the 1980s, like Cyndi Lauper’s Girls just wanna have fun. Not to forget some beautiful nods by Julian Bleach as the butler in both the town and the country, to the memorable performance of Freddie Frinton, in Heinz Dunkhase’s 1963 Dinner for One, which takes the substance of slapstick and the politics of clowning to perfection.

It’s a beautiful work, which lends levity in all the right places. Clocking in at just over three hours, with an interval, it is guaranteed to change your day. For good.

• The Importance of Being Earnest is written by Oscar Wilde and directed by Max Webster for the National Theatre in London. It features Ronke Adekoluejo, Julian Bleach, Richard Cant, Sharon D Clarke, Ncuti Gatwa, Amanda Lawrence, Eliza Scanlen and Hugh Skinner. Produced by Ollie Gardner and presented by the National Theatre Live, it features creative input by Chloe Blake and Alastair Coomer (casting); and Máire Graham O’Hara (costumes) Release date in South Africa, through Cinema Nouveau, Ster Kinekor: August 30 2025, for a very limited season.