Oscar Wilde gets a jazz-age reboot at the Minack Theatre

Swap the drawing rooms of Victorian London for deckchairs, live jazz and the Atlantic crashing away below the stage, and Oscar Wilde’s best-known comedy starts to look like something else entirely.

📷Credit: Elliott Franks

A Wilde classic, reset in the 1920s

The Importance of Being Earnest arrives at the Minack Theatre from Monday 21 to Thursday 24 September, staged by touring company OVO in a version that moves Wilde’s story out of its usual era altogether. Adapted and directed by OVO founder and artistic director Adam Nichols, the production drops the play into the roaring 1920s, a decade OVO describes as overflowing with style, glitz and glamour.

The twist doesn’t stop at the costumes. A cast of actor-musicians perform on stage alongside a live band, weaving jazz-styled versions of contemporary chart hits, among them songs by RAYE, Madonna, Lizzo and Eminem, through Wilde’s original dialogue. It’s a combination OVO bills as a hybrid of drama, live music and choreography, built for exactly the kind of open-air evening the Minack does best.

📷Credit: Elliott Franks

The women take the lead

Setting the play in the 1920s also shifts who drives the story. OVO says the female characters take centre stage in this version, brought to life with more agency and confidence than the text traditionally gives them, so that courtship in the play is powered as much by the women as by the men. It’s a reworking that leans into the era itself, a decade defined by women pushing at old social boundaries.

Wilde once called his own play “exquisitely trivial” and “searchingly serious” in the same breath, and OVO’s version is built to hold both of those at once, playful on the surface with something sharper running underneath.

📷Credit: Elliott Franks

Behind the reimagining

OVO has staged more than 100 productions over 23 years, and this is not the company’s first visit to the clifftop stage above Porthcurno. Adam Nichols said the production was a showcase of what the company does best.

“The Importance of Being Earnest is a showcase of what OVO does best: reimagining classic plays in a bold new colour,” Adam said. “Glittering, sharp, and beautifully mischievous.”

📷Credit: Elliott Franks

When and how to see it

The Importance of Being Earnest runs at the Minack Theatre from Monday 21 September to Thursday 24 September 2026. Tickets are available directly through minack.com, with the theatre’s famous granite seating carved into the cliff giving every performance a backdrop no indoor stage can match, weather and all.

📷Credit: Elliott Franks

📷Credit: Elliott Franks

📷Credit: Elliott Franks

📷Credit: Elliott Franks

📷Credit: Elliott Franks

📷Credit: Elliott Franks