The Importance of Being Earnest

The Importance of Being Earnest has class, and so does the current Agassiz production. Partly this is because of the uniformly creditable cast; mostly it is because of the play itself. Whatever the reason, Earnest is well worth sticking around Cambridge an extra evening for.

It may not seem particularly courageous to produce a play so hard to ruin, but courage isn't the best measure of good theatre. And it isn't as if Earnest presents no pitfalls to void. The Agassiz production, in fact, sidesteps one of them a little too closely. Wilde's jokes can easily be over-exploited, with the result that you laugh hard at the outset, but tire around the middle when the characters become little more than the jokes they spout. It is rather like watching a star-studded cast and not being able to forget who they are.

Earnest offers many star roles, and nearly all are more than capably filled, though not always be actors particularly well-suited to them.

The two male leads are miscast--Michael Erhardt as Moncrieff only slightly, and Thomas Babe as Worthing more seriously. But both overcome this and emerge as the most dependable members of the nine-man cast, Erhardt generally underplays his outrageous lines, and Babe doesn't have any.

As Lady Bracknell, Emily Levine cavorts in a high, aristocratic drawl. She is so consistently funny that the audience begins to laugh before she has done anything, and they applaud deliriously at the end of the first scene. But she is one stage too much of the time to act like a five-minute walk-on. Never is she completely brought into the play or even into her own role.

Ellery Akers plays Gwendolyn--Lady Bracknell's daughter--as another incredibly far-out character. Admittedly the mother and daughter are not particularly close in the text, but in the production they too often completely ignore each other, not to mention everyone else.

Susan Channing manages to manipulate the audience's hysterics as Cecily, while at the same time remaining carefully within the confines of her role. Sheila Hart looks and acts like Margaret Hamilton as the wicked witch of the East in Wizard of Oz. She fills her governess outfit beautifully.

Director Charles Ascheim, then, has a lot to work with. He has to strike some sort of balance between the antics of four extremely funny actresses and the overall consistency of the play. It seems to me he has capitulated to the antics, or simply not had enough time to coordinate them. Either way, Earnest comes over in patches. Furthermore, while Agassiz's small stage makes blocking difficult, there is no excuse for having characters stand stiff against the curtains while they are not part of the act.

William Schroeder's set appears to have been built under pressure and with little in the way of a budget, but it certainly serves its purpose. Some of Ellen Geisler's costumes--particularly Miss Hart's--are very effective, even if a few of the actors have haircuts and demeanors that seem a lot more 20th-century-Harvard than 19th-century-London.

Drawing-room comedy is not often performed at Harvard, and maybe that's an unfair label to throw at Wilde, who was certainly no drawing-room playwright. But The Importance of Being Earnest is a funny play, and whatever its present production lacks in cohesiveness, it makes up for in laughs.