Sian Phillips faces age-old dilemmas of playing Lady Bracknell in The Importance Of Being Earnest

Ironically, the Welsh actress is now playing Oscar Wilde's magnificent creature at the age of 82, joined at the Grand Opera House in York from Tuesday by Nigel Havers, 64, and Martin Jarvis, 74, as upper-class playboy Algernon Moncrieff and dependable Jack Worthing JP respectively.

They are on tour, reprising their West End turns in Lucy Lailey's playful production of Wilde's "trivial comedy for serious people", here played by the Bunbury Company of Players, a group of veteran amateur actors who return every five years to a play that so gloriously lampoons the hypocrisies of Victorian society.

"I first played Lady Bracknell in a production in Washington DC last year, though I'd been offered it ten years earlier, but had turned it down for being too old, which mattered to me, so I never thought I'd play the role," says Sian, who had loved Dame Edith Evans's celebrated interpretation.

"In America, there's a tradition of it being played by old leading men, which is wrong because they're too old, but then what can be 'wronger' than me doing it too, I thought, and I so enjoyed it!"

Nigel Havers as Algernon Moncrieff in The Importance Of Being Earnest. Picture: Tristram Kenton

Nigel Havers came out to Washington and duly offered Sian the chance to be the redoubtable Lady Bracknell for the second time that year, this time at the Harold Pinter Theatre in London. "He said everyone would be 30 years 'too old' for their role," she recalls. "It was just too good to turn down, so I went from one Lady Bracknell to another."

There were immediate contrasts between the two shows, the second using a new prologue written by Simon Brett to explain the premise of the Bunbury Company of Players.

"There are so many classical actors in America, more than we have here, so in Washington it was a classic, straightforward production by Keith Baxter, a lovely show that ran for four months," says Sian. "Then, after two weeks off, I started doing rehearsals over here on a rather different version!"

Sian had experienced reservations over ever playing Lady Bracknell on account of her admiration for Edith Evans. "She was my favourite; I played with her on stage and saw every show she did, so it was hard for me to imagine ever being Lady Bracknell," she says, going on to recall an encounter with Edith.

"I once did a Robert Bolt play, Gentle Jack, in the West End and it wasn't a part I would have chosen to play, but I just wanted to be in a play that Edith was in, and Robert was a friend of mine, so it happened."

It proved to be a memorable experience, ironically for all the wrong reasons. "Edith Evans didn't like the play, I didn't suit my part, the play wasn't a success, and I didn't learn anything from Edith because what she did was so mysterious," says Sian.

The Importance Of Being Earnest has proved altogether more enjoyable, as she returns to Lady Bracknell's grandstanding ways for a third time, this one on tour. "In between, last winter at the Sheffield Crucible I played Fania Fénelon, a celebrity singer and star of the Paris cabaret, turned Jewish inmate, in Arthur Miller's play, Playing For Time, about a women's orchestra at Auschwitz. It couldn't have been more different," says Sian.

"Wilde's play is one of the great British comedies; it's a play about silly people but played with absolute seriousness as they take themselves terribly seriously but talk absolute rubbish."

'Earnest' continues to provide endless delights. "I saw Rupert Everett in Paris, doing it in French, which was wonderful," Sian says. "Now we're doing it with Simon Brett's additions and once the set-up is settled, the play takes over, so the audience forget we're too old. They just get used to it, and it's very nice to play it to young audiences who don't know the story."

Age shall not make a jot of difference to Algernon and Jack's behaviour. "Juvenile people are always going to be juvenile," says Sian, laughing at the thought.

Nigel Havers as Algernon and Martin Jarvis as Jack. Picture: Tristram Kenton

What does she consider to be her imprint on Lady Bracknell. "Well, I didn't think about that at all. I tried to put Edith Evans out of my mind, and the play is so interesting and the part so tricky to play, that what takes all your time is learning to play it as you understand it, playing what you see is there, rather trying to put your own imprint on it," says Sian. "To try to do that would be silly. Just do the play."

"Just doing the play" requires absolute focus at all times. "In spite of one's experience or common sense, when you're waiting to go on and do one of those memorable short scenes, terror strikes," Sian reveals. "If I make one tiny mistake, the whole edifice will come down; you have to get every syllable right. If you get the rhythm wrong, then the sentence isn't going to work and that's mortifying. That's pressure."

The Importance Of Being Earnest, Grand Opera House, York, Tuesday to Saturday, 7.30pm, plus 2.30pm, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday. Box office: 0844 871 3024 or at atgtickets.com/york