Penelope Keith as Lady Bracknell
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West End and television favourite Penelope Keith is heading back to the stage. She will star as Lady Bracknell in a revival of Oscar Wilde’s 1895 social comedy
The Importance of Being Earnest. The production will tour prior to arriving at the West End’s Vaudeville Theatre. It begins performances there on 22 January and opens on 29 January.
Subtitled “a trivial comedy for serious people,” the play revolves around prim-and-proper Jack Worthington, who is in love with the equally prim-and-proper Gwendolyn Fairfax. His friend Algernon Moncrieff is in love with Cecily Cardew. But both women are in love with someone called Ernest.
Keith plays Gwendolen’s mother Lady Bracknell. The actress was last seen in the West End in another Bath Theatre Royal production of another Coward play, Blithe Spirit, which played at the Savoy Theatre in 2004. She also starred in the London premiere of Coward’s Star Quality (at the Apollo Theatre in October 2001). More recently, she was seen last year at Chichester Festival Theatre in the premiere of Richard Everett’s Entertaining Angels, subsequently taking it on a tour. Though she appears regularly in the West End and in touring productions, Keith is still best known for her TV work: the 1975 sitcom The Good Life and To the Manor Born, which ran from 1979 to 1981.
The Importance of Being Earnest, directed by Peter Gill, also includes Janet Henfrey, Tim Wylton, William Ellis, Harry Hadden-Paton, Daisy Haggard, Rebecca Night, Maxwell Hutcheon and Roger Swaine.
It will launch its U.K. tour at the Theatre Royal Bath for a run from 12-22 September, then visit Guildford, Edinburgh, Malvern, Aberdeen, Newcastle, Cambridge, Chichester and Richmond.
The Importance of Being Earnest is scheduled for a limited West End run to 26 April only.