Name: Open Play Reading - The Importance of Being Earnest
Start: 2025-03-11T20:00:00+00:00
End: 2025-03-11T22:00:00+00:00
Location: 30 Godstone Road, CR3 6RA Caterham, United Kingdom

Our open play reading for THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST by Oscar Wilde will be at 8pm in the Studio on Tuesday 11th March. This is your chance to come and find out a bit more about the play and meet the director, John Shepherd.
Our play readings are free to attend and open to everyone, including non-members. Anyone who wishes to read will be given a chance to do so, but you are also very welcome to come and listen to others read. We hope to see you there! At the end, you will be able to borrow a script (which must be returned before or at the audition).
The auditions will be on Tuesday 25th March and Sunday 30th March in the theatre. You only need attend one of those dates. The audition notice is available here:
https://themiller.net/auditions/
You do not need to be a member to come to a play reading or audition, but if you are cast in a play, you must join (membership is £30 per year).
PERFORMANCE DATES: 3rd - 12th July (including a matinee on Saturday 5th July).
GETTING HERE
Access to the Studio is around the back of the theatre: This is at the end of Timber Lane, off Timber Hill Road - use the postcode CR3 6LZ or what3words: knee.marker.slides
https://what3words.com/knee.marker.slides
We are a few minutes walk from both Caterham train station (trains from London Bridge/East Croydon run every 30 minutes) and the 407 and 434 bus routes. Parking is available in local side streets.
SYNOPSIS
Also known as A Trivial Comedy for Serious People, Oscar Wilde’s classic satire of the upper classes portrays two young men, Jack and Algernon, who are keen to avoid their social obligations. Clearly, the easiest way to get out of anything is to pretend that your name is Ernest. Thus chaos, comedy and confusion ensues as both young men develop their own love interests, try to thwart each other and seek to avoid domination by the indomitable Lady Bracknell.
Fans of handbags, cucumber sandwiches, relations, carelessness, proposals, christenings, railway stations (especially the Brighton line) and governesses with secrets cannot fail to be entertained by Wilde’s witticisms and exaggerated characters.
Written in 1895, his play of conformity and resistance, duty and pleasure reminds us all that whilst to be earnest is a virtue, there is so much fun to be had in bending the rules.