After nearly a century, the Westport Country Playhouse is finally presenting “The Importance of Being Earnest.” “06880” culture correspondent Robin Moyer Chung offers her insights on the classic play:
It’s widely hailed as Oscar Wilde’s masterpiece, officially subtitled “a trivial comedy for serious people,” written while he was on trial for homosexuality. Weeks into its run he was sent to prison for 2 years of hard labor.
Three years after his sentence ended, he died penniless in a Paris hotel, his last words being, “This wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. Either it goes or I do.” He was 46 years old.
Which may be the least funny way to introduce the comedy “The Importance of Being Earnest” at the Westport Country Playhouse, especially because the season is designed to inspire and uplift.
Kristen Hahn, Mark Silence, and Katy Tang.
The show centers around 2 wealthy bachelors who fall quickly and madly in love with 2 young — very young — women who both know in the deepest recesses of their callow hearts they could never consider marrying a man who isn’t named Earnest.
Victorian hilarity ensues.
Because the play is written for an audience from the turn of the century (the last century), newer audience-goers may find it a bit lengthy.
However, it’s an important play to see. And the Playhouse production, directed by Melissa Rain Anderson, is as taut as a 125-year-old comedy can be, with sprightly direction and good pacing.
Visually it’s a fun, frothy swirl of costumes (Annie Le), and sets “Like an illustrated pop book come to life,” artistic director Mark Shanahan aptly states of James Fenton’s design of the interior of a Victorian mansion.
An intricate set, at the Westport Country Playhouse.
Shanahan says, “Melissa Rain Anderson has worked at theaters all around the country. When I asked her if she would be interested, she said ‘It’s on my bucket list.’”
It was also on Westport’s bucket list as, crazily, this is the first time the show has played on WCP’s stage in its 95-year history.
Eagle-eyed onlookers may notice that the costumes are set in Edwardian times, allowing the costume designer a sleeker cut to the clothing. I take no umbrage in that, because I loved the dresses and I wouldn’t know the difference. If the inching to a more “modern” or “5 or 6 years later” time period offends you, then you know an enormous amount about history and theater and I hope that brings you a bit of solace.
When Le was designing her frocks and suits, she considered things other than their obvious theatricality. How will this dress look when twirling beneath rose petals? What habit of the wearer might inform the costume — something to twiddle? To touch?
Michael Raver and Anthony Michael Martinez. (All photos/Carol Rosegg)
Aside from the costumes, some of my favorite parts are when John Worthing carefully but courageously touches Gwendolyn’s curl. The witty barbs traded among Algernon and John in the first act, along with Lady Bracknell’s exquisite societal reasoning. And in Gwendolyn and Cicely’s delightful dialogue at the beginning of Act 2.
It’s these singular details which make the show fresh and contemporarily entertaining to modern theatergoers.
(Conversely, one of my less favorite things is Cicily’s voice. It’s a choice.)
There’s no denying the cast is having a blast onstage. As early as the first read, cast members were clapping and laughing along. Shanahan recalls, “it was a rare experience!”
As if to prove this, as I left WCP the cast was having lunch on the patio, laughing and chatting as though they were on the very un-Victorian Church Lane during happy hour.
(“The Importance of Being Earnest” runs through November 15. Click here for tickets, and more information.)
(Robin Moyer Chung covers culture — just part of our hyper-local, 24/7/365 blog. If you enjoy what we do, please click here to support our work. Thank you!)
A couple of corrections are necessary to the above alleged historical reports about Oscar Wilde’s life:
#1– Wilde did NOT write “The Importance of Being Earnest” “while he was on trial for homosexuality” as Robin claims. He wrote and finished the play in 1894, and the play was already being performed in February 1895. His trial for “gross indecency” was later after the play had already opened, on April 26, 1895.
#2. His famous quip or ‘bon mot’ about the ugly wallpaper at his hotel was made to a friend several weeks before he died. Those were not Wilde’s last words (although it makes for a good story). https://www.businessinsider.com/fake-famous-last-words-in-history-2017-10#either-this-wallpaper-goes-or-i-do-oscar-wilde-irish-playwright-2
Struck by scenery when we entered the theatre! The plot featuring almost-Shakespearean identity confusion, comedic propriety, and classical wit, with twists of phrase, was something we all need now. While the cast, across the broad, was well-fit and spot on, I enjoyed a delayed surprise ending the day after, when I heard one of the (talented versatile) cast members hosting her radio show “Broadway Breakfast.”