WICKEDLY WITTY WILDE
Sometimes you just need to take refuge from the contemporary world with a classic play. And when it’s delivered as delightfully and professionally as Antaeus Theatre Company’s season opener, Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, rejoice and feel the load lifting off your shoulders, if only for two-plus hours.
While the play itself first premiered in 1895 (with Wilde’s extended title, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People) some themes remain timeless — especially hypocrisy and duplicity. And this farcical, extremely witty play revels in both.
Jay Lee and Anne Gee Byrd
Set at the end of the Victorian era with its standards of moral rectitude, prim manners and strict divisions between social classes, it features two young-ish bachelors who maintain double lives to cover up their penchants for profligate behavior.
There’s the snarky dandy Algernon Moncrieff (Jay Lee), also known as Algy, whose formidable Aunt Augusta a.k.a. Lady Bracknell (Anne Gee Byrd) makes imperious demands on his social life, which he deftly deflects by pretending to have an invalid friend named Bunbury who he must visit and care for.
Alex Barlas
Algy’s friend, the ostensibly upstanding John Worthing (Alex Barlas), comes to the city for fun while maintaining a country manor where he is responsible for a beautiful young ward named Cecily Cardew (Alessandra Mañón), who refers to him as “Uncle Jack.” To justify his absences from the country manor, he has created a fictitious bad-boy, city-based brother named Ernest, whom he must rescue from misadventures. Algy knows Jack as Ernest, but not the bad-boy version.
Jay Lee and Michael Yapujian
So, Jack as his alias Ernest has come to the city to propose to Lady Bracknell’s daughter, the strong-willed Gwendolen Fairfax (Jules Willcox) in requited love with him — as Ernest. Having earlier caught Ernest and Gwendolen in a compromising position, Lady Bracknell forbids their union (she’s also got the power over who Algy marries). But now there’s another problem. Ernest left his cigarette case behind during a previous visit and Algy discovers its tantalizing inscription, revealing the existence of “Little Cecily.” When Ernest tries to wriggle out of admitting that Cecily is his young beautiful ward, not his old aunt in Tunbridge Wells, Algy challenges him, saying he always suspected that Ernest was a “Bunbury-ist,” explaining the phony friend he uses as an excuse to get out of unwanted social obligations.
Jay Lee
Ernest confesses to being Jack, but Algy likes a bit of trouble (ah, these men of leisure!), and with Ernest’s calling card in hand (including his country address), he determines that he must meet Cecily himself. Cecily (whose life is a bit boring) is delighted to finally meet the bad boy brother.
As it happens, for no reason whatsoever, both women have always wanted to marry a man named Ernest. So when Algy, pretending to be Ernest, meets Cecily, and falls head over heels in love with her, she agrees to marry him.
Alex Barlas and Jules Willcox
But Uncle Jack returns unexpectedly, Then Gwendolen also shows up unexpectedly. The multiple Ernests must be explained to both of the outraged women, who will not marry them unless their names really are Ernest. Rev. Chasauble (Bo Foxworth) is on hand to christen them if he can. And Cecily’s governess (Julia Fletcher) who has a crush on the reverend, is the only one who can clear up the mystery of Jack’s origin story to reach the hilariously unlikely happy ending.
Jules Willcox
The wonderful irony of the play is that Jack has a lot of money and property, but his tale of being discovered in a cloak room at a railway station as an infant disqualifies him societally from marrying Gwendolen in Lady Bracknell’s eye. While Algy, who gives the appearance of being well-to-do, is nearly penniless and under the financial oversight of Lady Bracknell. She has the final say for both men’s marital game plans.
Alex Barlas and Jules Willcox
Of course, it wouldn’t be an English play without a butler, and Michael Yapujian does an admirable job of playing both Algy’s Lane and Jack’s Merriman, who act as the perfect foil to the foibles of the upper-class men they serve.
Michael Yapujian
Enhanced by Ken Booth’s lighting design, John McElveny‘s props by the actors are a strong, tight and well-oiled ensemble with believable accents (dialect coach Paul Wagar). There’s a lot of well-choreographed physical comedy and great pacing under Gigi Bermingham’s direction. The scenic design by Angela Balogh Calin is all upper-class elegance with period-perfect furniture, including damask couch, floor to ceiling drapes and walls painted in that rich shade of museum green that sets everything off, from the framed art to the cushioned chairs. Later scenes set in the country garden are deftly suggested by a latticed tri-fold screen replete with cascading roses and a wall of ivy at the back and also in the manor house’s breakfast room, where both Algy and Jack will argue with mouthfuls of muffins.
Alessandra Mañón and Julia Fletcher
The costumes by Julie Keen authentically reproduce the fashion of the age with plenty of time for gown and dress-jacket changes from scene to scene. The men’s shirts feature standup collars and cravats. While Algy sports checkered vests and jackets and a sophisticated tailcoat dinner suit, Jack is more conservative in his three-piece suit, but looks hilarious when he wears mourning clothes for the fake death of his fake brother.
Jay Lee and Alessandra Mañón
Gwendolen wears the fancier gowns while Cecily is dressed slightly more country-style, despite the fact that it turns out she has an enormous fortune, which is lucky for Algy. Both of the younger women are dressed in the style of the “New Woman,” with puffy sleeves, shirtwaists and for Gwendolen, blazers atop the gown with a high neck. Cecily’s luckier, she gets to wear her blouses cut lower, revealing her neck.
Anne Gee Byrd, Michael Yapujian and Alessandra Mañón
Lady Bracknell’s dresses remind me of Maggie Smith’s gowns in Downton Abbey, except that these colors are vibrant, from a radiant blue to a dazzling canary yellow with the fitted double layer of a second fabric laid over them.
Jules Willcox, Michael Yapujian and Alessandra Mañón
The humor in this 130-year-old play holds up well, and Oscar Wilde’s wit and sarcasm are as timely today as when his renowned bon mots were first written. If you love theatre, this production is a must-see. If you don’t love theatre, this will make you a theatre lover.
Bo Foxworth and Julia Fletcher
photos by Jeff Lorch
The Importance of Being Earnest
Antaeus Theatre Company
Gindler Performing Arts Center, 110 East Broadway in Glendale
Fri at 8; Sat at 2 & 8; Sun at 2; Mon at 8
ends on November 18, 2023
for tickets ($40), call 818.506.1983 or visit Antaeus
Sarah A. Spitz is an award-winning public radio producer, retired from KCRW, where she also produced arts stories for NPR. She writes features and reviews for various print and online publications.