The importance of being Tadhg
Wilde's most famous play has been given a daring make-over. One of the stars, Tadhg Murphy, explains why Wilde would have appreciated an all-male version
Joe Jackson, 23 Aug 2005
Tadhg Murphy likes to wear dresses. To be fair, he has donned a frock for purely professional reasons. The Dublin actor plays Gwendolyn in the Abbey’s all-male production of The Importance of Being Earnest. It isn’t his first experience of skirts: he wore a cute little number in the movie Alexander!
More seriously, you may know Murphy from roles in television shows such as Love is the Drug and plays such as A Christmas Carol and The Goat.
In fact, Murphy, seems to be working almost non-stop. How does he feel swishing about – utterly convincingly and magnificently, it must be said – in a dress for Conal Morrison’s retelling of Earnest?
‘Well, actually, it’s a deep private part of me that’s trying to get out!” he jokes, speaking on the morning after opening night.
“But the truth is that, as an actor, there is a huge challenge to walk and talk like a woman. At the same time, Gwendolyn is a very defined character. She’s an upper class girl who knows what she wants and has certain mannerisms.
The new Earnest emphasizes the flamboyance of Wilde’s writing and Murphy’s performance reflects this.
“We are doing a slightly heightened version of the play so I’ve styled her character in that sense. We even had to rehearse in corsets for four weeks!”
Did he fear Morrison’s version would tip into outright camp pastiche?
“Well, to tell you the truth my family was there last night and the production divided them, whatever about the public at large and critics” Murphy responds. “My brother didn’t really go for the ‘bookmarks’ idea (the play opens and closes with Wilde, alone and broken in Paris) whereas my parents loved them and really felt for Oscar by the end of the play.”
But does Murphy really believe Wilde would have wanted the homoerotic dimension of the piece so heavily accentuated?
“You can’t deny that the homoerotic dimensions are there in the play," he says. "You can’t deny them because you do have men in dresses playing women and it’s based on a particular perception of Wilde’s fantasies and longings." But he feels the new version is true to Wilde. "I honestly don’t think we make a big deal out of this aspect of the production and, at the end of the day, I think we are totally true to the actual play.”
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