Arena Stage Frolics With Earnestness

When Oscar Wilde wrote The Importance of Being Earnest he was taking pot shots at an aristocracy that was heavily focused on maintaining a shell of heightened propriety while often failing to live up to even the most basic standards of human decency.

Since it was first performed in 1895 society has changed significantly. The World Wars altered the global landscape, the Cultural Revolution questioned societal values, and the technological boom shifted the most basic patterns of life, yet somehow Wilde’s criticism of a self important, image conscious society is just as relevant today than it was over a century ago.

Last Thursday Arena Stage raised the curtain on its production of The Importance of Being Earnest. Directed by comedic veteran Everett Quinton and designed by Zack Brown the show takes an erratic tack on the wit and whimsy of the classic English comedy. Exuberant though sometimes errant in its humor the production manages to keep current the critical nature of the play hidden behind fanfare and frolic. While a departure from the standard production practices of Wilde’s oft-performed play, both Quinton and Brown provide some innovative choices that while, they at times go astray refuse to allow the play to fall into the category of “same old,” deadly to plays as heavily produced as Earnest.

From the opening scene it is immediately clear that neither Brown nor Quinton feel inhibited by the standard subtlety inherent in the play’s text. Instead, they employ a free hand in doling out meta-theatrical characters, sight gags, and sets and costumes more Lewis Carroll than George Bernard Shaw.

The operating visual metaphor in the play is the image of the flower, which Brown infuses into the entire performance. Most obvious are the eight 12 foot tall sunflowers that serve as a kind of proscenium arch. It undercuts the self-importance of the characters who try to maintain their dignity despite the fact they are all acting under the shade of someone’s backyard flower garden.

Later, the sofa in the third act turns out to be the center of a flower created through the design on the floor and lighting effects. Form without function, the floral theme addresses the useless aestheticism of society.

More subtle than the floral motif, yet still notable is a small vanity mirror placed center stage in the opening scene. The mirror underlines the pervasive obsession with style over personal substance and how the appearances often stand at odds with reality.

Illustrating that point is the character of Lady Bracknell performed by Claudia Robinson. Throughout the play, Bracknell is the cultural authority on social propriety and careful breeding, yet with all her concern over lineage she turns out to have improved her own situation through marriage.

Robinson’s performance and attire lack subtlety, and at times Wilde’s biting wit is crowded out by directorial choices, but she also serves to capture, through over-the-top exaggeration, the hypocrisy of personal conceit, as prevalent today in this country as it ever was among the English aristocracy.

Ian Kahn plays a bubbly Algernon Moncrieff as a social butterfly who believes nothing serious except the trivial, one of those precious paradoxes that Wilde intersperses into his plays with a deft hand. His performance captures the contradiction of lightness and a sad aimlessness which comes from living purely for pleasure. As he desperately eats muffins trying to overcome his disappointment over losing the affection of the fickle Cecily Cardew (Tymberlee Chanel) he displays a soul grasping for satiation. But this brief poignant moment stands in contrast to the intentional exaggerated levity of the production.

At the beginning of the second act Cardew prances around her garden sprinkling water as her flowers instantaneously rise to the sound of a slide whistle. Initially the choice seems ludicrous even laughable but it also sets the tone for an Alice in Wonderland atmosphere where things are more than they appear.

It starts to become clear that it is not just the two men calling themselves Earnest who are playing someone they aren’t, but in fact every person is living in a delusional state. Whether it is Cardew writing letters to herself, Miss Prism (Helen Hedman) composing her own three part drama, or Gwendolyn Fairfax (Susan Lynskey) carrying her journal so that she will always have something exciting to read, though her life seems to be nothing but constant tea parties, everyone has a little fantasy life that they’ve drawn up around them.

There are some choices that miss their target. The decision to cross-gender cast Rev. Chasuble (Marybeth Wise) and add lesbian undertones to his/her relationship with Miss Prism is inexplicable at best. It seems to be more a reference to Wilde’s own personal life than a dramatic decision. The casting doesn’t forward any particular thematic element, the chemistry is cumbersome and the two characters don’t have enough time to build a relationship that is able to get the audience past the initial confusion. Nor do the staged histrionics such as Algernon and Jack’s scramble over the cigarette case or the muffins work in a play that is so largely dialogue driven. The physical comedy just upstages the lines, which if delivered appropriately would resonate better than a tussle over baked goods.

Still the play as written by Oscar Wilde is a gem and the production, while it attempts some new directions with the style, still manages to honor the text.

Just as the aristocratic audiences of Wilde’s time enjoyed the light hearted digs at their foibles so too does this performance remain above the gravity that might cause offense to a contemporary audience. But the lightness of the piece and the heightened hilarity of this performance screen a sharp critique of empty materialsim as present today as it was 109 years ago.