Diana Rigg Returns as Earnest Lady B???

Diana Rigg - who won the Whatsonstage.com Theatregoers’ Choice Award for Best Actress for her role as Mrs Venables in the 2004 revival of Tennessee Williams’ Suddenly Last Summer - is expected to return to the West End later this year to play another formidable lady. She’s lined up to star as Lady Bracknell (a handbag?) in a new revival of Oscar Wilde's 1895 social satire, The Importance of Being Earnest. Wilde's last and perhaps most famous play tells a complicated story of Victorian upper-class love and manners. Jack Worthing is in love with Gwendolen Fairfax, daughter of the Lady Bracknell and cousin to his friend Algernon Moncrieff. Meanwhile, Cecily, Jack's young ward, is in love with Algernon. The question of Jack's parentage, an illusory invalid and the invention of a wayward brother all complicate things further. The Importance of Being Earnest was last seen in the West End in a Chichester Festival Theatre revival starring Patricia Routledge, which ran at the Theatre Royal Haymarket in 1999 before touring Australia and New Zealand and then returning for a stint at the Savoy in 2001. The new production will be directed by Philip Prowse.

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