Arts & Culture Editor Callum Hynd braces the cold of the Library to talk to cast members of the Bailey Theatre Company’s production of The Importance of Being Earnest, which premieres this evening.
On a Sunday afternoon I was privileged enough to be allowed into the freezing old Library for a sit down with some members of the cast and crew of the new upcoming BTC play, The Importance of Being Earnest.
This Thursday through to Saturday, the Bailey Theatre Company (BTC) will be preforming the work, written by the Victorian societal darling Oscar Wilde, at the Old Johns Library.
While the play has been on the Chronicle’s review radar for a while, I had been growing rather nervous. A few days before my interview I had seen on the BTC Instagram a call had gone out for the role of the titular lead, Jack Worthing. With only a week to go before the opening night, and with no volunteers having come forward, I had to sit down with the cast on Sunday to see what was going on.
Conversing with the co-directors, Raaga Jain and Victoria Travers, it turned out that there had never even been an Earnest! (You will have to go and see it to make sense of this). While this would have been crippling in most situations, thankfully Victoria had been reading for Jack in rehearsals so she has stepped up to perform the role. As Raga put it, “it was very fitting that we spent so much time trying to find Earnest”. While the lack of a lead has been difficult, both have expressed sure fire faith in Victoria’s ability to deliver a strong performance.
With the main worry alleviated, I was able to engage with the cast. I was pleasantly surprised at the sheer passion from every member of the cast I spoke to. All are highly excited to take part in the play, a useful qualification given that the rehearsal time has only amounted to about the last two weeks, most of which (as aforementioned) has been without the titular character. As current students will no doubt know, these past few weeks have been a hectic time at Durham and with so short a rehearsal period as well as bigger trans-college productions plundering supplies of actors and time, this passion will be a key determinant of the play’s fortunes.
A reason for the casts infatuation with the script is their iron cast belief in the relevancy of the story. While a couple of the jokes of the play may have aged poorly (though personally I’m with the Victorians in thinking that Vegetarians are still fair game), the consensus is that the play’s focus on the double standards of British society are still as relevant and comical as ever. Co-director Victoria even expressed the belief that the Importance of being Earnest had far aged better than the recent freshers play “Pickups”, which is about 130 years younger.
The play will be on Thursday the 30th, Friday the 1st and Saturday the 2nd this week. I have been promised a witty and hilarious performance and have been told to look out for what has just been ominously referred to as the “Tea Scene”.
Personally I look forward to finding out the importance of being Earnest.
John's Chronicle 