Cir­ca The­atre’s The Impor­tance of Being Earnest has marked itself down as a fan­tas­tic retelling of my favourite non-New Zealand play, and an excel­lent night out besides.

Staged in a thrust stage in Cir­ca One, Jonathan Price’s direc­to­r­i­al hand is evi­dent as a play that is often so caught in (delight­ful) inter­nal con­ver­sa­tions is broad­ened out and gift­ed to the audi­ence via plen­ty of asides, acro­bat­ics and know­ing winks.

You’ll like­ly know the sto­ry of this piece, but in the event that you don’t, here’s an out­lin­ing. Alger­non (Iso­bel Mack­in­non) and Jack (Andrew Pater­son) are upper-class soci­ety mates. Jack has a house in the coun­try and divides his time between his city and coun­try res­i­dences, using a dif­fer­ent name in each. He is des­per­ate­ly in love with Gwen­dolen (Ryan Carter), and hopes to mar­ry her. Alger­non refers to Jack­’s escapades as “bun­bury­ing” and decides to do a spot of his own to seduce Jack­’s ward, Ceci­ly (Dawn Cheong). Along the way there’s missed con­nec­tions, mys­te­ri­ous pasts, and a whole lot of caper­ing.

This is a glo­ri­ous stag­ing of this sto­ry, for it man­ages to ride the line between whol­ly satir­i­cal and also giv­ing the char­ac­ters space to be bold and res­o­nant in their iden­ti­ties — some­thing that Wilde does well in his orig­i­nal script but is often mocked in stag­ings. This is espe­cial­ly impor­tant when two of the char­ac­ters are being played by per­form­ers in drag. Sure, the entire script takes place over a hand­ful of days, involves sev­er­al improb­a­ble romances and shows off upper class folk with­out inter­ro­gat­ing their cir­cum­stances, but in a play this nuanced, it’s fine to just sit in the non­sense for two won­der­ful hours.

It is a will­ful­ly, won­der­ful­ly camp show with bold musi­cal num­bers and equal­ly as bold choic­es, re-imag­in­ing a clas­si­cal play with many con­tem­po­rary twists. Inclu­sion of lit­tle games on stage amongst the wider stag­ing delight and catch the eye — I espe­cial­ly enjoyed the actors tak­ing chival­ry to the max when lead­ing around the ven­er­a­ble Lady Brack­nell (Irene Wood) at the top of the show, along­side the sheer deliri­ous lust Miss Prism (Anne Cham­ber­lain) and Rev. Cha­suble (Peter Ham­ble­ton) seemed to have for each oth­er.

Cir­ca’s The Impor­tance of Being Earnest is an unap­pre­ci­at­ed gem and only on for a few more days. The acro­bat­ics, wild block­ing, height­ened per­for­mance and sheer joy in the work is some­thing that should­n’t be missed.