OSCAR Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest — on stage at Helmsley Arts Centre this month — is surely the most famous work of Victorian drama, writes director Mike Martin.

Perhaps because of its relative lack of social message or political grandstanding, it remains Wilde’s most enduring play. So it’s quite surprising that the Arts Centre’s 1812 Theatre Company, now in its 25th year, has never done it before.

But even though this is a standard work of the English-speaking theatre world, Earnest does present challenges for amateur companies: those that struggle to find actors in their twenties and thirties are often put off the play. Happily, the 1812 group is blessed with a good supply of talented younger actors, so as the director I had no difficulty in casting four key roles: Algernon, Jack, Gwendolyn and Cecily.

The next challenge with such a well-known play is how to make the production seem fresh. Having dismissed thoughts of novelties such as modern dress, song-and-dance or setting the action in an igloo, one possibility did present itself. We are including a scene, excised early on by Wilde at the behest of the play’s first producer, George Alexander of the St James’s Theatre, which in fact stands out as one of the most comic episodes in the whole play.

‘The Gribsby Scene’ — often included in screen adaptations but rarely seen on stage — introduces a degree of mild jeopardy into the plot and, like all good farces, leaves us pretty much where we were at the start. It was an enjoyable task to take the various versions of the scene, usually found as appendices in published scripts, and produce a final ‘edit’ which suits our small auditorium with so many characters on stage.

Gribsby, a London solicitor, pursues the fictitious ‘Ernest’ for an unpaid bill of indecent proportions at the Savoy Hotel. The intriguing aspect of Grigsby (played by 1812 veteran Richard Noakes) is that he is the only significant character who is not of the upper classes, and acts as a foil for the sensibilities of the rest of the cast. Audiences will also enjoy some of the 1812 Theatre Company’s other regular actors tackling Wilde’s timeless characters. Martin Vander Weyer makes a convincingly unworldly canon of Dr Chasuble, Liz Cox is a high Victorian governess as Miss Prism and Lynn Goslin gives us a glorious and refreshingly Scottish Lady Bracknell.

The Importance of Being Earnest runs from 25-28 April. For tickets phone the box office on 01439 771700, www.helmsleyarts.co.uk