Coming to the Theatre Royal in Spring 2027
Irving Stage Company is thrilled to be bringing its production of this sparkling comedy to Bury St Edmunds. First performed in 1895, it has enjoyed huge popularity around the world ever since, both on stage and on film.
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does, and that is his.
In Edwardian Mayfair, John Worthing lives the bachelor life under the name of Ernest – a ruse that delights his friend Algernon Moncrieff, who admits he has an imaginary chum “Bunbury” who can get him out of unwanted obligations.
If I am occasionally a little over-dressed, I make up for it by being always immensely over-educated.
Worthing proposes to Gwendolen Fairfax – only to be thwarted when her haughty mother, Lady Augusta Bracknell, discovers he is a foundling, discovered in a handbag at Victoria Station (the Brighton Line!)
To lose one parent, Mr Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose both looks like carelessness.
Meanwhile Lady Bracknell’s nephew Algy sets off to Hertfordshire to uncover the truth of Worthing’s secret life in the country.
The truth is rarely pure and never simple
He finds John’s ward, Cecily Cardew, and (of course) falls immediately in love.
Oh! I don’t think I would like to catch a sensible man. I shouldn’t know what to talk to him about
The scene is set for farce, as Worthing, Gwendolen and Lady Bracknell converge to sort out whom’s who, whom’s called what, and where Cecily’s governess Miss Prism fits into it all. (Hint – it’s all to do with the handbag!)
The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.
