STANDING to one side of Nick Sargent's Act 1 set for Oscar Wilde's

comedy of deceit, there is a classical statue of a male nude with its

genitals prominent and a cocked hat on its head. A fig leaf is amusingly

drafted in for scenes of greater decorum, but for all Wilde's sexual

ambiguity, the cocked hat makes as pertinent a comment on the

playwright's world view.

For while his characters are invariably drawn from a privileged elite,

there is an ever present sense of subversion in his writing. Of course

he has his cucumber sandwiches and eats them -- he revels in the

decadence of the idle rich even while he is satirising the shallow

emotions of this ''age of surfaces''. Likewise the audience laughs as

much with as at his cynical and emotionally distant characters. And the

larger than life they are the better.

Here Victoria Hardcastle is the largest of the large; decked out in

costumes that keep her narrowly on the tasteful side of pantomime dame,

she plays Lady Bracknell like an ice maiden, her steely gaze appearing

to strike every member of the audience directly in the eye.

Apart from Kern Falconer's unexpectedly funny minister, the other

actors still have room to grow into their parts. James Telfer's Algernon

has an endearing live-for-the-moment foppishness playing opposite Hugh

Simon's fall guy, Jack, for example, but both are a little too polite to

draw fully on the play's undercutting energy.

The show, directed by Richard Baron, is still confident and amusing,

but I suspect it will really ignite when it transfers to Edinburgh's

Royal Lyceum in June, where a bigger auditorium will encourage bolder,

funnier performances.