Breaking Baz: ‘Doctor Who’ and ‘Barbie’s’ Ncuti Gatwa stars with Sharon D Clarke and Hugh Skinner in Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Importance Of Being Earnest’ at Britain’s National Theatre; ‘Live Aid’ musical transfers to Toronto

Ncuti Gatwa, Sharon D Clarke and Hugh Skinner. Getty.

Doctor Whos Ncuti Gatwa and W1As Hugh Skinner will star in a National Theater revival of Oscar Wilde’s play about courtship, betrothal and confused identities. The Importance of Being Earnest Three-time Olivier Award winner Sharon D. Clarke also plays the imperious Lady Bracknell.

Director Max Webster made his NT debut Deadline exclusive that Gatwa and Skinner are cast as idle bachelors Algernon Moncrieff and Jack Worthing – both leading double lives – who pursue two young women, both determined to marry someone called Ernest, and with Clarke as the dreaded widow who makes her own rules of class, taste and decency was ‘a dream come true’.

Webster and NT casting director Alastair Coomer also feature Richard Cant (Gloomy house, as we live now) to play Reverend Canon Chasuble and comedic genius Amanda Lawrence (Star Wars, Suffragette) as Miss Prism in the 1895 satire, which will be at the Lyttelton Theater in the NT from November 20 to January 25, 2025.

The director clearly has a way of recruiting talent from the BBC’s long-running sci-fi drama about an alien who travels through time in a Tardis.

Recently, Webster directed David Tenant, a famous film Doctor whoas Macbeth at the Donmar warehouse. It also starred Cush Jumbo, who played Lois Habiba Doctor who spinoff Torch wood.

Macbeth will transfer to the Harold Pinter Theater on October 1. Webster told me that “fingers crossed” it should be taken Macbeth to Broadway. “There are conversations,” though he cautioned, “one step at a time.”

He said he “always loved” Wilde’s classic, “and the fact that it is so genuinely funny.” I think it must be one of the funniest and most brilliant pieces of English ever written.

Webster also noted that “for all its wonder and joy, it is also quite subversive.”

The story that underlies it The Importance of Being Earnest is just as moving as what happens on stage.

Wilde wrote The Importance of Being Earnest at a time when he was dangerously balancing life with his wife and children, and while still in contact with his beloved Lord Alfred Douglas, whose father, the Marquis of Queensbury, was furious about their relationship.

The double lives that Algernon and Jack led in the play were a commentary on Wilde’s own double life.

“It was controversial when it was written,” Webster said, referring The Importance of Being Earnest opening in London when the Marquess of Queensbury publicly accused Wilde of being homosexual. The playwright sued Queensbury for libel, lost and was subsequently found guilty of gross indecency, resulting in a two-year prison sentence.

Webster noted that “for all its joy” the piece is a “manifesto for being able to be yourself and not be boxed in, and for the joys of self-invention, and that feels like there’s something very wonderful and relevant to be said about that . to our modern world while still being a good Christmas comedy.

Ncuti rose to fame with four seasons of the Netflix show Sex educationa role in Apple TV+’s Masters of the airand of course playing ‘artist Ken’ in Greta Gerwig’s blockbuster Barbie. And he helped wow a global audience when he joined number one ‘Ken’, Ryan Gosling and a host of other Kens in a stirring rendition of ‘I’m Just Ken’, performed in tribute to Marilyn Monroe’s musical number for “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend” from the 1953 film Men prefer blondes during the 96th Academy Awards. The Kenergy at the Dolby Theater was incredibly breathtaking.

However, Webster said he had admired Gatwa since seeing him at Shakespeare’s Globe playing Demetrius in Emma Rice’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 2018. “And then, of course, he thought he was great at it Sex educationfunny and moving and all the good things.

“I thought he would be a very witty, flamboyant and fantastic Algy, and he was the first person I thought of. It’s amazing that he does this,” he added.

Gatwa debuted in 2023 with the role of The Doctor Doctor who Christmas special.

His first full season in Doctor who launches on May 11 on BBC1 and BBX iPlayer in the UK and Disney+ and elsewhere.

Similarly, Webster praised Clarke for her “strength, power and weight” as an actor, citing her award-winning stage roles in the NT version of Amen CorneR; Caroline, or changea production that started at the Chichester Festival Theatre, moved to Hampstead Theater and then to the West End’s Playhouse Theatre, before crossing over to the Roundabout’s Studio 54 Theatre, and then to the Young Vic and Elliott-Harper production of Death of a salesman which played at the Young Vic, Piccadilly Theater at the Hudson Theater on Broadway, starring Wendall Pierce as Willy Loman. Clarke played Kinda Loman.

I’ve also seen Clarke, one of our greatest actors, in countless other theater shows, from the Kiln Theater in North London to the Hackney Empire in East London, not to mention her sublime turn in the titular role in Ma Rainey’s black pantsdirected by Dominic Cooke, at the National in 2016.

Clarke is currently filming the three-part detective drama Ellisin which he played the title role for Acorn and the British Channel 5.

Webster said Lady Bracknell somehow “represents the forces of Victorian conservatism, and for someone of Sharon’s charisma to do that is absolutely brilliant.”

Skinner, who has appeared in Fleabag, the Windsors, Mamma Mia! Here we go again, And Poldarkappears in the newly released feature, Bad lowercase letters. His many stage roles include Yepikhodov The Cherry Orchard at the Young Vic and Lewis American psychopath at the Almeida Theater.

The NTs The Importance of Being Earnest will be a “redesigned” version.

When asked what that means, Webster said, “We’re in the Victorian era, but you know, there’s different ways of not being completely reverent about it.”

He said the Rae Smith-designed sets and costumes will be done “with a modern fashionable touch, in the way that Wilde was fantastic and subversive in his day, and pushed the style forward to the point where it is almost a political point or a cultural point. Hopefully we can find a way to make Victorian costumes that are true to the piece, but also modern and fashionable.”

Major roles of Gwendolyn Fairfax and Cecily Cardew, among others, have yet to be cast.

The creative team includes lighting design by Jon Clark, sound design by Nicola T. Chang, movement by Carrie-Anne Ingrouille and composition by DJ Walde, who recently composed and arranged the music for Stranger Things – The First Shadow.

Exclusive update on ‘Live Aid’ musical ‘Just For One Day.’

Bob Geldof will be happy. The Live Aid musical Just for one daywhich played at the Old Vic in London, will soon announce that the show, directed by Luke Shepard, will move to Toronto’s Ed Mirvish Theater in January for a limited run.

John O’Farrell will adapt his book, and after Toronto there is a possibility it will be tried out in a regional theater in the US before being shown on Broadway.

There is also hope that it will return to London for a run in the summer of 2025. Hopefully it will by the time of Live Aids 40th anniversary on July 13, 2025.

When I reached Jamie Wilson, who co-produced the show with Geldof, he said the idea of ​​America was “intriguing” but that it wasn’t just him.

Beware of ‘Two strangers‘.

There’s a lot of well-deserved buzz surrounding a new musical Two strangers (carry a cake through New York)which played a sold-out run at the Kiln Theater before transferring to the West End’s Criterion a few days ago.

It’s a two-hander starring Dujonna Gift, who I had seen in leading roles thus far Caroline, or change And Motown the musical here in London, and Sam Tutty, who won an Olivier Award for playing Evan Hansen in Dear Evan Hansen.

Written by newcomers Jim Barne and Kit Buchan, the show was developed through the George Stiles and Anthony Drewe MTI Mentorship. An earlier version, when it was still called The seasonwas first produced by the Royal & Derngate Theater in Northampton and the New Wolsey, Ipswich.

It’s a rom-com about Douglas (Tutty), who arrives in New York to attend his estranged father’s wedding. Robin (Gift), the bride’s sister, meets him at JFK. What follows is an extremely delightful and cheerful love story. Some of the people in the seats in front of me were sobbing. Tears of joy, you might think?

There is clearly more to this story, but no revelations are made here. The show has just been extended through August 31st.

This column reliably communicates that there is “gretness” for Two Strangers (Carry a cake through New York) to transfer to an Off-Broadway house or a US regional theater to “maybe test the waters” for Broadway.

But catch the London stars if you can. Both Gift and Tutty have beautiful singing voices, and they are easy to handle. They are so charming. I’ll definitely visit again.

Stars of tomorrow.

Every now and then, usually sitting on a jury for theater awards, I and others worry about where and when the next stage stars will appear.

Do not worry. I saw two, and a group of potentials, far away in the south London borough of Peckham, home to the Mountview Academy of Theater Arts, at a final-year student performance of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Sunday in the park with George. The limited run ended Saturday.

I caught Noah Thallon as George and Amber Hoile as Dot. They are leading actors in the ‘Light Cast’. They were excellent, as was director Sally Ann Gritten’s production, with musical direction by Dan Jackson.

A very good friend saw Josh Rosewood and Roman Lewis-Malley play those roles in the ‘Colour Cast’ and called them just as fascinating as Thallon and Hoile.

This gives me great pleasure, but also makes me somewhat sad.

I pray that when they graduate, there will still be some kind of entertainment industry where they can show off their acting skills.