You might ask yourself: why would a person want or need to see a (or, if you’re like the Tatler: another) production of The Importance of Being Earnest?
To that question, two responses. First, because Oscar Wilde is an unmatched genius when it comes to comic dialogue, and no matter how many times you may have read the play, or seen a production, the wit and barb of his writing never fails to delight and surprise.
And second, because the production at the Pittsburgh Public Theater is not only charmingly funny, but also fresh and a bit subversive. Director Jenny Koons’s tight adaptation weaves excerpts from etiquette and manners books into the scene transitions in order to shine light on the restrictive social rules that Wilde’s play comically sends up. This choice offers a bit more access to what Wilde might have had in mind when he subtitled his play “A Trivial Comedy for Serious People”: those “serious people” being, perhaps, the ones who either wrote or conformed to those rules in earnest in his day – and who perhaps need to learn to lighten up in our own.
Other changes Koons has made in this adaptation seem minor; I suspect that some dialogue has been trimmed, but Wilde’s plot is largely unchanged. That revolves around Jack Worthing (Paul “Paulie” Deo, Jr.), who has presented himself under the name “Earnest” to his social circle in London. When his friend Algernon (Dylan Marquis Meyers) uncovers his ruse, Worthing confesses that he invented a troublesome brother in the city – named Earnest – in order to give himself a pretext for spending time in London, away from his country house and his ward, Cecily (Alex Manalo). Worthing is in love with Algernon’s cousin Gwendolyn (Veronica Del Cerro) and intends to propose marriage to her, but this plan is thwarted by Gwendolyn’s mother Lady Bracknell (David Ryan Smith) when she discovers that Worthing does not know who his parents are, because as an infant he was abandoned in a handbag in the cloak-room at Victoria Station. (The interview in which Lady Bracknell extracts this information from Worthing is one of the funniest scenes ever written: I offer as evidence Lady B’s peerless pronouncement that “to lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.”)
Worthing also has another obstacle to his marital aspirations: Gwendolyn, who declares that her goal has always been to marry a man named Earnest. This sets the play’s farcical engine in gear: Worthing returns to his country estate with the intention of announcing the death of his fake brother so that he can take on the name Earnest himself; meanwhile, Algernon arrives at the estate pretending to be Jack’s brother Earnest in order to woo Cecily. When Gwendolyn turns up, there are both too many Earnests, and not enough of them. A third couple indispensable to the plot is the Rev. Canon Chasuble (Joseph McGranaghan) and Cecily’s buttoned-up governess Miss Prism (Susan M. Lynskey), the latter of whom becomes essential to unwinding the play’s complications.
Koons has made some directorial choices that make the play zing in unexpected ways. To begin with, she has dispensed with British accents; instead, she has the actors speak in their native (US) accents with heightened enunciation. This works surprisingly well: not only does it serve the rhythm and snap of Wilde’s dialogue, but it also makes the superficiality of the action – which is key to the play’s comedy – feel more authentic and light. Freed from the labor of maintaining an artificial accent, the actors can focus instead on building and maintaining the ridiculous social artifice of the world of the play.
The actors are also more “American” in their physical embodiment of their roles. I’ve seen productions of this play that are hilarious precisely because the characters’ stuffy British physical restraint is so at odds with the surprising candor of their language. Koons loosens things up and offers a different mode of comedy alongside the dialogue, with moments that border on slapstick (as when, toward the end of the play, the towering Lady Bracknell tells Cecily “You may kiss me” – an action that presents a comical challenge to the diminutive Alex Manalo).
As for Lady Bracknell – just as the ensemble finds authenticity in the comedy by not “playing British,” Smith makes Lady Bracknell a force in the play by not “playing female.” The laughs stem not from the tired trope of “man in dress” drag (although her outfits, along with Hugh Hanson’s entire costume design, are spot-on gorgeous), but rather from Smith’s haughty and imperious embodiment of the character itself.
So, why would you want to see The Importance of Being Earnest? Because it’s a comic masterpiece, beautifully produced, and there’s no better way to spend a couple of hours than in the enjoyment of Wilde’s wickedly funny writing.
The Pittsburgh Tatler 