The Mercury Theatre in Colchester has today announced the full cast for their revival of Oscar Wilde’s beloved comedy The Importance of Being Earnest from 1-16 March 2024. The Mercury Production, which will be directed by the Mercury’s Creative Director Ryan McBryde (They Don’t Pay? We Don’t Pay!, The Comedy of Errors), will give Wilde’s dazzling play a stylish makeover and will open the theatre’s 2024 season.
Widely regarded as one of the greatest comedies ever written, The Importance of Being Earnest zings with contemporary relevance, subversively satirising the snobbery and hypocrisy of extreme wealth and excess.
Gillian Bevan, who is best known for playing Gina Hope in BBC’s Holby City, Claire Hunter in Channel 4’s Teachers and Theresa May in The Windsors alongside starring in the West End productions of Billy Elliot (as Mrs Wilkinson) and Follies (Young Phyllis), will play the role of Mrs Bracknell. Bevan recently played the role of Jack’s Mother in Theatre Royal Bath’s revival of the Sondheim musical Into The Woods and Hazel in Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds’ production of Lucy Kirkwood’s The Children.
Horrible Histories stars Richard David-Caine and Harrie Hayes will reunite on stage for the new production.
David-Caine, who will play Jack Worthing, has been a regular Horrible Histories cast member in Horrible Histories since 2016 and has also starred as Line in the CBeebies series Swashbuckle and five series of the BBC mockumentary Class Dismissed; for the latter he was nominated in the 2017 and 2019 RTS Awards for Best Performance in a Comedy.
Hayes, who will play Gwendolen Fairfax, has been a regular Horrible Histories cast member since Series 8 and has also starred as I Heart BLTN in the BBC Three/Netflix series Red Rose and Tess in the Fox Searchlight movie My Cousin Rachel.
Elizabeth Bower, best known for playing the role of Dr Melody Bell in the BBC soap opera Doctors and Aunt Corey in the CBBC/ABC children’s television show Secret Life of Boys, will play the role of Miss Prism.
They will be joined by Susannah Van Den Berg (Gypsy – Mill at Sonning) as Lane / Merriman, Mateo Oxley (The Windsors – Channel 4, Much Ado About Nothing – National Theatre) as Algernon Moncrieff, Claire Lee Shenfield (Once – China Tour & Tokyu Theatre Orb) as Cecily Cardew and Martin Miller (The Band – UK Tour) as Rev Canon Chasuble.
Alongside McBryde, the production’s creative team comprises of Katie Lias (Bleak Expectations – West End & The Watermill Theatre) as Designer, Lucía Sánchez Roldán (Camp Albion – The Watermill Theatre) as Lighting Designer, Beth Duke (Wishmas – Secret Cinema, Strategic Love Play – Belgrade Theatre & UK Tour) as Sound Designer, Marc Frankum (The Woman in Black – West End, The Mousetrap – 60th Anniversary Tour) as Casting Director and Chani Merrell as Assistant Director (Birkbeck Placement).
McBryde said of today’s announcement, “We’re delighted to be launching our 2024 season with Wilde’s mirth inducing masterpiece. Though it is without doubt one of the funniest plays in the English language, Earnest often gets branded as a frivolous farce. But when you scratch away the surface the play is actually a scathing and subversive attack on the official order of English society, ridiculing our values and beliefs, demolishing the late nineteenth-century’s social and moral attitudes. Wilde’s skewering of class, marriage, hereditary privileges, education, religion, and gender identity is actually a scorching social satire, as relevant today as it was to our Victorian ancestors.”.
McBryde continued, “We’re working with designer Katie Lias to dispel the myth that Earnest is a fusty, dusty Victorian period piece. We’re envisaging our version of Earnest as a bright, colourful and vibrant English fantasia embracing a retro chic aesthetic.”
More information can be found at www.mercurytheatre.co.uk
