An earnest version of Oscar Wilde

A musical take on Wilde's famous play doesn't quite live up to expectations

For this reviewer the show comes most to life in the moments when the performers put down the book and pick up the script.  After all, Cecily Cardew and Gwendolen Fairfax are the most delightful comic duo to have appeared on a London stage since Shakespeare wrote “As You Like It.”

In the roles Katie Fabel and Annika Boras win the night’s biggest belly laughs as the battling rivals who unexpectedly call a ceasefire and then forge an alliance against the men they love.

Ian Holcomb’s turn as Algernon Moncrieff is, it has to be said, mostly louche to the point of parody.  He preens and pouts in a gorgeous smoking jacket, but he rarely approaches the sulphurousness of the role as written.

That leaves Noah Racey as John Worthing to do some heavy lifting, which he manages consistently throughout the night. Peter Maloney is terrific as the flirtatious Dr. Chasuble, and Kristin Griffith compliments him ably as a deeply repressed Miss Prism.

The set, which is designed by James Morgan, makes imaginative use of the Irish Rep’s stage, opening up the space remarkably. Director Charlotte Moore does very well with a musical that’s as a light as a soufflé and as easy to overcook.

That it performs as well as it does is a tribute to her resolve and to the chorography of Barry McNabb, who puts the cast through their paces in scene after scene.

In some respects Wilde’s moral universe, for all its paradox and subtlety, was often the most conventional thing about him. He believed in love, wholly and completely; he actually suffered and died for it.

And while this is hardly the stuff of a holiday musical, this work might have been so much richer if the writer had found a moment to acknowledge it.

“Ernest in Love” is now playing at the Irish Repertory Theatre, 132 West 22nd Street, New York. For tickets call 212-727-2737.

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