I remember the first time I saw a Bloomshed show. It was Paradise Lost at Northcote Town Hall back in 2022. John Milton was God in an oversized Pope hat and a robe painted a dazzling green. Adam was a ditzy himbo and Eve a ditsier bimbo in ’80s jazzercise gear.
It was my first glimpse into what has become a famous formula for the acclaimed Melbourne-based troupe: take a canonical text and tear it apart with razor sharp satire and camp spectacle. Since 2012, the company has been reimagining classics with productions as absurdly entertaining as they are thought-provoking. You’re throwing dodgeballs at Blanche DuBois in A Dodgeball Named Desire to rethink the age-old beef between sport and art. You’re watching a pig from George Orwell’s Animal Farm face a senate enquiry. You’re laughing your way to a deeper understanding of art as much as these specific pieces of art.
The Importance of Being Earnest is a surprising misstep from the audacious troupe, but it’s an ambitious one. The lights come up on Oscar Wilde (a suitably droll James Jackson) asleep in a decadent Victorian chambre with an erection threatening to pull the roof off fortyfivedownstairs. It’s typical Bloomshed: deliciously dumb and bawdy satire supported by simple yet magical stagecraft. It’s also a knowing wink to an audience who’d expect nothing less from the bombastic company tackling our most famous hedonist. The show soon takes aim at these very expectations, becoming something like an anti-Bloomshed Bloomshed show. The result has all the self-referentiality of Hannah Gadsby’s Nannette, just with less of the finesse.
Wilde spots us and laments what has been done to his ‘masterpiece’ or what will be done, whether by adaptations like this or by the audience back when it premiered in 1895. After all The Importance of Being Earnest, while being Wilde’s biggest success, also signalled his downfall. Opening night was marred by a plot to ‘out’ him by the mother of his then-lover that would soon lead to an accusation of ‘gross indecency’ and his imprisonment.
It's hard to imagine Wilde’s famously light-hearted farce framed by this very real tragedy. For Bloomshed, it’s also not the only thing that seems contradictory about the show and the legacies of its author. What do we make of the fact that the affair at the heart of Wilde’s trail was with a man seventeen-years his junior? Or that Wilde could be as elitist and morally bankrupt as those he so expertly skewers on stage? What responsibility do those who adapt his work have to these imperfections? What do we ask of contemporary adaptations of classics – complete fidelity and absolute respect for their creators, or a complete overhaul?
The first half of the show boasts a surprising fidelity to Wilde’s original play as it tries to reckon with these questions. Jack Worthing (Hayley Edwards) tells the idle bachelor Algernon (played by Jackson) about ‘Earnest’; the false moniker he’s been using to woo the virtuous Gwendolen Fairfax (Elizabeth Brennan).
The small but strong cast (completed by Tom Molyneux) all commit to an upper-class Victorian drawl. But Wilde’s complex aphorisms and turns of phrase, as well as the quick-fire play of names and intersecting storylines for which The Importance of Being Earnest is known for are hard to follow at the best of times. Things are made more confusing because we don’t know how much these machinations are important to Bloomshed’s reimagining and its wider commentary. Some choices read as simply a hammier, slightly more exaggerated way to stage the show, rather than a way to reframe its themes and witticisms to comment on something new.
A noticeably silent audience on opening night seemed perplexed as if waiting for Bloomshed’s satire to begin and Wilde’s to end, all the while quietly amused by on stage costume changes and witty line deliveries that the company has pulled off better in the past. There are still the classic Bloomshed staples here to enjoy: a cucumber sandwich food fight, confetti guns and spontaneous dance numbers. Brennan is as funny as ever as Cecily, and costumes by Samantha Hastings and Nathan Burmeister are decadent and eye-catchingly unique (Lady Bracknell’s technicolour-patchwork gown was a particular highlight). But these moments and design elements lack the creative ambition that typifies the company, and crucially, seem only incidentally connected to Wilde and the complicated tragedy of his life.
Maybe that’s the point. In seeing our expectations for classic Bloomshed debauchery dashed, we’re forced to reflect on the reasons the reality of Oscar Wilde’s legacy simply can’t accommodate them. But the show has stretched itself thin between biting but fun jabs at Wilde’s legacy and biography (which include clear references to paedophilia and grooming) and more serious questions about what we need from adaptations of classics.
We leave this intriguing experiment from the iconic company with good ideas and hard questions but no clear sense of what to do with either. Laugh, maybe? Eat a cucumber sandwich? I’m still unsure.
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