James Agate’s response to Gielgud’s 1930 production is all the more curious and
James Agate’s response to Gielgud’s 1930 production is all the more curious and inconsistent when compared with his reaction to the revival of The Importance of Being Earnest that emerged a few years later at the Old Vic, opening on 5 February 1934, for a run of twenty-eight performances. The brevity of this run should be understood not to indicate a failure but, rather, in light of the Old Vic’s status as a repertory company, as part of a planned season of plays each with limited runs, causing occasional necessary shortcomings in casting and scenic effects.[1] This time, it is Agate who is full of praise, while the critic for the Era deplores Wilde’s total lack of “sincerity, humanity, indignation, or a sure and sympathetic understanding of human vanities and weaknesses”; with regard to such qualities, said the Era, this playwright “is empty as a drum.” And yet, if the playgoer nevertheless likes Wilde, he will find that Tyrone Guthrie’s production is as good as one could hope for. Guthrie has captured the period qualities of the play and nicely emphasized its artificiality.[2] Molly MacArthur’s scenic designs are of a piece with her costumes, J. T. Grein observed about this production in his omnibus review of the week’s “World of the Theatre” for the Illustrated London News. The glitter of Wilde’s play remains “untarnished,” Grein added, thanks to the fact that it was created by a process of “spontaneous combustion.”[3] Writing for the Observer, “H. H.” identified Wilde’s play as high comedy and compared it to Congreve’s Love for Love (the next play to be performed by Tyrone Guthrie’s company); practical differences between the two “are more apparent than real.” Acting in high comedy requires “self-confidence based on high competence.” This was widely but not universally in evidence in the Old Vic production. Athene Seyler as Lady Bracknell played her “famous inquiry into the handbag past of her daughter’s suitor” like the set piece it was, “a deliberate display of witty pyrotechnics.” Charles Laughton’s “unctuous Vicar” was “perfectly audible and pre-eminently unfrockable.”[4]
The Times reviewer heartily agreed. The merit of Guthrie’s production throughout was his acknowledgment of a suitable principle: “[t]he more frivolously extravagant Wilde’s invention is, the more certainly should it be allowed to make its own effect.” Although Roger Livesey’s John Worthing was not remarkable, some of the actors were especially successful. Charles Laughton’s Chasuble was “thick with the oil of gentlemanly hypocrisy.” Almost throughout the evening, in fact, one had the impression of ‘living in the company of people to whom genius, like cucumber sandwiches, is a commonplace’. Nor did the critic for The Stage, who noted the planned limitation of a month’s performances for Wilde’s play, see any disadvantage to its joining the repertory as played by the full company. When it includes such capital actors as Athene Seyler as the Lady Bracknell, the hit of the ev