The Importance of Seeing Earnest

Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest first premiered in 1894, but it remains refreshingly modern. A work of humor elevated to high art, the play is an illuminating critique confronting the thin line between the mainstream and the marginal, eccentricity and madness. Through comedy, Wilde wittily establishes the importance of identity, exploring how a particular name establishes legitimacy in the hearts of lovers and in the eyes of society. Despite its serious implications, this exploration is nothing if not entertaining. Remarkably, the new production of Wilde's masterpiece directed by Fred Hood '02 captures both the hilarity and the deeper implications of this nearly-canonical text.

The Importance of Being Earnest is essentially a man's play. It's a story about how two men, Algernon Moncrief and John Worthing, cross back and forth into real and unreal selves through playing the part of Ernest to win the love of the women they wish to marry. The female characters, except for the singularly (and in this case, literally) masculine Lady Bracknell--perhaps a little too enthusiastically portrayed by Cary McClelland '02 (his rasping, high pitched voice is at times over the top)--are lackluster characters. Certainly, Wilde blessed them with a number of witticisms, but it is the men who steal the show with their smug expos of upper class British society and the virtue of lies. As John Worthing intones midway through the play, "My dear fellow, the truth isn't quite the thing one tells to a nice, sweet refined girl." Later he even concludes that it is a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking nothing but the truth.

Far and away, the most charming and delightful character is Algy Moncrief, played superbly in this production by David Skeist '02. Algy, while an indulgent cad, has disarmingly endearing qualities. His lines are among the most poignant and comic in the play. Skeist personifies Wilde's Algy with verve and spirit, charming us with his boyish expressiveness and roguish irony. John Worthing (James Carmichael '01) counteracts the foppish Algy with his serious, pragmatic, truly earnest nature. He is ordinariness manifest: a man who has come of the right age to marry, has a veritable income, a mediocre intellect and a moderate view of politics. Carmichael's performance is as sound and solid as John Worthing's constitution--although at times he does not act as earnest as his role requires but rather seems inclined to wax a little too much on the wishy-washy side.

The heroines, Gwendolyn Fairfax (Ahana Kalappa '01), the erudite, cosmopolitan salon lady and Cecily Cardew (Britanni Sonnenberg '03), the eighteen-year-old ward of John Worthing, also have their moments. As the fiancees of John and Algy, they are demanding women. They cause their men to play at being Ernest since they cannot love those who are not earnest in character, not to mention Ernest by law and sacrament. Britanni Sonnenburg is a light breeze on stage as a mischievous, innocent Cecily. Ahana Kalappa contrasts nicely as the precocious, urbane Gwendolyn, whose malapropisms are enough to throw a dictionary at. Kathryn Powell as Miss Prism, Cecily's spinster governess, and Stian Westlake as Dr. Chasuble, the parish clergyman, give grounded performances. Cary McClelland makes for a delightfully indignant, buxom Lady Bracknell, whose voice breaks just a little too much, presumably for the sake of emphasis. But it is the director Fred Hood in his cameos as the two butlers, Lane and Merriman, who steals the show with his brief moments on stage.

Fred Hood and company have cleverly toyed with the concept of the known and unkown, an important element of the play, in their adaptation of Wilde's comic chef doeuvre. The set design, in particular, contrasts the real and the imagined, the familiar and the foreign, the west and the non-west. The first set, where the male protagonists first discuss their desire to play Earnest, is a wonderful mix of European fin-de-siecle charm and the exoticism of the East. Long silk saris drape the fabric wall paper of this 19th century English drawingroom. A hookah adorns the mantelpiece, and a Gaugin-like scene of Tahiti floats above a Rodin-like Cupid. Set Designer Nithya Raman '02 has adroitly brought an exotic, mystical flavor to her European interiors. Her designs emphasize the distinction between the familiar and the foreign in this play about mixed identity, truth and lies. Hood's production is fundamentally solid, with humorous performances throughout and an innovative explication of the identity crisis integral to Wilde's play.