We could all do with a bit of joy right now: fortunately, a wave of it has been unleashed in Kingston. Denzel Westley-Sanderson, winner of the RTST Sir Peter Hall Award for young directors, brings a boisterous energy to Oscar Wilde’s evergreen 1895 comedy. It sometimes borders on the unsubtle, but it’s great fun.
He’s not the first to give the play an all-black cast or to have a drag queen as Lady Bracknell, and in truth neither decision has a particularly radical impact on the play. A mild lesbian subtext, achieved by casting the traditionally male minor role of Reverend Chasuble as a woman, generates a greater frisson. Wilde would surely have approved.
