The wit of Oscar Wilde on full display in an age dominated by text messaging is like an ice-cold bottle of Piper Heidsieck exploding into a Dixie cup at a temperance meeting. It is both delightful for those who revel in Wildely dramatic conversation and off putting for those who want the CliffsNotes in life.
I heartily recommend Voice Theatre’s production of “The Importance of Being Earnest,” Wilde’s frothiest play, at Bellamy Hall in Kingston’s Old Dutch Church opening July 11.
The first two acts are packed with sight gags, unending witticisms, and a suitably ridiculous plot involving, yes, the importance of being (named) “Earnest.”
Algernon Moncrieff (Leon Schwendener) and John Worthing (Josh Bierman) thrust and parry through a Wildean landscape of paradox mocking wealth, class, entitlement, marriage, public identity and perceived morality itself – all with lightning-flash reversals which to this day remain the playwright’s signature invention. Yes, it was Oscar Wilde who said, “I can resist anything except temptation.”
Like many a farce, “Earnest” contains at least one foundling, and one completely unexplained plot line so quickly unresolved we’re meant to forget it ever happened. It all changes at least once by play’s end.
There are of course respectable appearances to lampoon, largely those of Lady Bracknell, played by far-too-attractive Katrina Lantz (Bracknell was written to be sexless and was often played by a man) who actually remains the mother of Gwendolen Fairfax is played by a superciliously perfect Ali Shinall. Further spot-on casting finds a Lolita-like Grace Bardsley as Cecily Cardew, the coquettish ward of one of the would-be-Earnests who keeps a fantasy diary of a betrothal to another faux-Earnest that never occurs until, ever-so-earnestly, it does. The faceoff between the warring would-be-wives of would-be Earnests is Wilde both at his most biting and most adorable. Minor roles congeal admirably.
The secret weapon of the show, however, remains (the only true Briton stage) Robert Langdon Lloyd, who, as the butler, Merriman, single-handedly proves Stanislavski’s adage: “there are no small parts, only small actors.”
Designer Charlie Barnett was – at rehearsal – perfectly coiffed, himself, and the photos of his work look fabulous!
The only problem with the play’s otherwise superb direction by Shauna Kanter is that bits of songs by the (later) Beatles, Hendrix, and the Stones are atmospheric connectors that fail. To use bacchanalian sound bytes in a play wherein Victorian mores are rudely abused yet strictly obeyed creates a disconnect that hurts a production having little to do with true sexual decadence. Wilde’s actual life took kink to the brink, as is chastely implied for a single nanosecond in the last act when balls-to-the-wall rock indeed does work.
Of the play, Wilde himself said: “[Earnest] is exquisitely trivial, a delicate bubble of fancy, and it has its philosophy… that we should treat all the trivial things of life very seriously, and all the serious things of life with sincere and studied triviality.”
In February 1895 Wilde received at his club the card of his young lover’s father, the
Marquis of Queensbury, addressing “Oscar Wilde/posing sodomite.” The playwright sued for criminal libel, lost, was countersued by Queensbury, and after a rogue’s gallery of male prostitutes testified against him – was found guilty on numerous counts of “gross indecency” and sentenced to two years of hard labor, during which he quickly wrote De Profundis before being released and dying in Paris at 46 in 1900.
If any audience deserves comic relief from a world gone mad it’s an American audience, trying to forget what November is likely to bring. And so we are all overdue for the treat originally subtitled: “A Trivial Play for Serious People.”
See you on opening night!
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