Double Vision is The Importance of Being Earnest. Only in two languages and simultaneously. The gloriously over-acted discussion of cucumber sandwiches and tea suddenly breaks into the whinging of actors on a fag break. This being Oxford, the meta-theatre continues apace. A single rehearsal of Wilde is now replaced by two, one in French and one in English. And these rehearsals then blur into one another: two lady Bracknells are certainly better than one, even if one does occasionally drop a line and reveal the character of the actress herself. This finishes up with multiple Cecilys and Jacks battling it out in French and English with both their own partners and their counterparts across the channel.

So it is a play about acting and language, in which the actors are engaged in an ongoing criticism of one another's pronunciations and of the translation of the play from English into French. An Anglophone audience need not be too perturbed by this: most of the French material has already been used in English, so the speech was equally easy to follow in both languages. This model, in which a self-conscious translation is used to examine translation itself, is exploited further by brief passages in the styles of Pinter, Tardieu and Ionescu (as my program helpfully informed me). There is however no rhinoceros, but I suppose you can't have everything.

Some of the earlier sections took a little while for the audience to grow into. In particular, when the script suddenly evolved into a new style it created a change of pace that foiled the expectations that had been established in the Wilde sections. The actors all managed the ever-changing roles demanded by the text with a certain aplomb. But special mention must go to James Halstead as the butler, who served as the lynchpin for the changes in language, as well as playing a hilarious Italian waiter. The national stereotypes were indeed out in force.

They also gave me cake at the end, which was very good. I think more plays should follow this initiative and give their audience cake.

Philip Wood, 01.06.05