This month, The Court Theatre are bringing Oscar Wilde’s classic comedy The Importance of Being Earnest back to the stage. Actors Emma Katene and James Kupa talk to Oliver Hall about peeling back Wilde’s layers of innuendo, queer-coded themes, and sharp gender commentary that was so ahead of its time.
Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest has long been framed as a drawing-room comedy: light, frothy, impeccably mannered. But beneath the cucumber sandwiches and clipped Victorian wit is a play obsessed with performance.
“My biggest connection is probably to the way people have to present themselves in everyday life,” Emma Katene (who plays Gwendolen) tells us. “And how that changes depending on who you’re with. It changes in your relationships, it changes in your friendships, it changes how you present yourself publicly to people you feel responsible for.”
For Katene, that constant recalibration feels quietly queer. “Queer people go through that a lot, not only when we’re exploring our identity, but even after we’ve settled into ourselves.”
James Kupa, who plays the gleefully duplicitous Algernon, locates that queerness directly in Wilde’s writing.
“When you delve into the script, the amount of layered nuance and innuendo packed in there is like a delicious lasagne,” he laughs. “There are so many things that are funny and so coded that, unless you really dig into it, you could easily miss.”
Bunburying, Then and Now
The Importance of Being Earnest follows a group of aristocratic, high-society characters whose lives unravel thanks to a shared commitment to lying. Algernon and his friend Jack invent alternate identities — a practice Algernon christens “bunburying” — to escape social obligations and indulge their desires elsewhere.
But things become complicated when romance enters the fray. “It’s misunderstanding creating really good drama,” Katene explains.
The Court Theatre’s production keeps the play firmly in its original period setting — corsets and all — but for Katene, that aesthetic acts as a Trojan horse.
“It’s a cool hook to bring up interesting conversations,” she says. “There’s so much on display around masculinity and femininity and different gender energies. If you hide it in a little pocket of ‘period’, it can be a bit more digestible.”
That includes the rapid intimacy between women, the effeminacy of the male characters, and the way touch operates onstage — details that land differently for contemporary audiences than they might have a century ago.
Playing the Lie
Algernon is, by design, a difficult character to love. He’s glib, self-indulgent, casually misogynistic — and lying to almost everyone.
“He cares only for what feels best in the moment and what’s most fun,” Kupa says. “He puts on a façade of being a respectable member of high society, but he doesn’t actually like that world very much.”
Yet Algernon can’t tip into villainy without collapsing the play. “Cecily has to fall in love with him genuinely,” Kupa says. “And he genuinely falls in love with Cecily. So it’s a tightrope.”
That balancing act happens line by line. “He pumps out some of the most misogynist, gross lines,” Kupa admits. “So how do we approach this with the audience and the other characters still wanting to be around him? It’s delicate surgery.”
Katene’s Gwendolen, meanwhile, resists compromise altogether — a quality that makes her one of Wilde’s most arresting creations.
“I’ve approached her as someone who is new to feminism,” Katene says. “Like anything, the first time you’re exploring something, you go in really hard, but the pendulum has to swing.”
Rather than reading Gwendolen’s certainty as rigidity, Katene frames it as defiance. “Gwendolen knows what she wants, and her way of being against society is to be staunch in that.”
That confidence, however, isn’t uncomplicated. “Even though she’s staunch, she still cares a lot about what other people have to say,” Katene adds. “That’s an interesting self-worth to explore.”
Wilde’s Women
Katene is particularly drawn to how Wilde writes women — and how often they’re underestimated.
“Compared to other male authors writing female characters, his women are quite well fleshed out,” she says. “That feels connected to the fact that he may have lived a double life. He understands the nuance of people a bit more than other authors I’ve read.”
She wonders who Wilde was really observing. “Artists are a reflection of their times. He must have been associating with a diverse range of people, even if they were largely upper class. It makes me wonder what perspectives he was absorbing.”
What Lingers After the Laughter
Both actors want audiences to enjoy Earnest for what it is: one of theatre’s great comedies.
“I hope they have trouble breathing,” Kupa grins. “Not for any medical reason — but because they’ve laughed their guts out and can’t get out of their seats.”
Katene hopes something quieter follows the laughter.
“I’d really like them to come out having a think about who they are inside versus who they say they are outside,” she says. “Every single person needs to think about that. And if they haven’t been inspired to think about it, this is a great opportunity.”
In a play built on lies, that question may be Wilde’s most enduring truth.
