The Importance of Being Earnest as Performed by Three F*cking Queens and a Duck
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Date Reviewed: 02/10/2025
As kids, we played Director’s Cut: a game where a scene was endlessly replayed: faster, slower, as a Western, as a romance, operatic. Watching The Importance of Being Earnest as Performed by Three F*cking Queens and a Duck conjures that as we watch three ageing theatre queens (and one inexplicable duck) locked in a loop of trying, and failing, to stage Oscar Wilde’s masterpiece.
What unfolds is less Wilde’s polished comedy and more a rehearsal in free fall. Sebastian (Steven Dawson), Winston (Christopher White) and Christian (Scott Middleton) tear through a mash-up of experiments, rivalries and desperate bids to reach opening night as the goalposts keep shifting along the way.
Steven Dawson, Artistic Director of Out Cast Theatre (Australia’s longest-running LGBTI+ theatre company), is at home in this territory. With more than 60 plays to his name (Bitch Antigone, Jane Austen’s Guide to Pornography), he revels in camp parody and theatrical in-jokes. Here, he skewers Wilde while also celebrating him.
The set is minimal but striking: a tableau fusing Ancient Greek black-figure vase painting with flamboyant theatrical gesture. The exaggerated poses scream Toulouse-Lautrec’s cabaret but look as though they are plucked from mythology.
Lighting does much of the heavy lifting, swinging from sultry pinks to brooding blues to match both Wilde’s repartee and the queens’ vicious rehearsal-room sparring.
Scott Middleton, with his RADA polish and Commedia dell’Arte training, proves how razor-sharp timing can make even the filthiest insult land with elegance. Christopher White volleys barbs at such speed that audience laughter often drowns out the dialogue. Together with Dawson, they create a riotous chemistry.
The language veers between Wildean elegance and Dawson’s raunchy riffs. One moment we hear Oscar’s immortal line—“To lose one parent, Mr Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.” The next, a tirade about “multiplying by seven and shoving it up his arms.” Wilde’s poise collides with Dawson’s gutter wit: champagne spiked with tequila as the classical clinks glasses with the outrageous
Yes, it’s chaotic. Yes, some in-jokes will fly over non-theatre folk. But this is Theatre Works; home to risk, reinvention and artists who push form to its limits. The audience was fully complicit, laughter ricocheting around the house.
And the duck? At first a prop, then a distraction, it morphs into a running punchline. Silly. Unnecessary. Perfect.
At just 60 minutes, the play is short, sharp and filthy — more “rampage than homage,” as promised in the program. In stripping Earnest down to its bones, it reminds us that theatre should be alive, unpredictable and just a little dangerous.
Highlights
- Oscar Wilde’s wit reframed in a riotous new context
- The thrill of seeing the same scene played in wildly different styles (especially Chekhov)
- Tableau-inspired set design that doubles as visual art
- Movement and lighting that accentuate the grotesque
- Wall-to-wall laughter
Who it’s for
- Fans of Oscar Wilde and theatre at large
- LGBTQI+ audiences and allies—this is part of the Fringe Festival, after all
- Theatre lovers who relish seeing what it really takes to stage a work
Avoid it if you are expecting to see a classical adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest.
Performances run nightly at 9pm until Sunday, 5th October.
Reviewed by Mary Sinanidis