‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ @ Upright Theatre Company
Photos by Jennifer Leyva
—Jan Farrington
“To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.”
“Oh! I don't think I would like to catch a sensible man. I shouldn't know what to talk to him about.”
“The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.”
It’s a rare comedy that can still give us the giggles after more than 125 years.
But Oscar Wilde’s 1895 mega-hit The Importance of Being Earnest, against all theatrical odds, keeps the laughs coming and the comedy sharp, even as the social manners and concerns of that time grow increasingly unfamiliar to us. Earnest’s playful and silly cleverness is a stitch—though the funniest thing of all is that none of the characters onstage is trying to be funny. This is their world, and they’re playing it straight.
Upright Theatre Company’s Earnest, well directed by Michael Childs, sets that atmosphere of serious (even deadpan) comedy, and a quite good cast pulls it off. Frankly, you don’t do Earnest unless you have a cluster of actors up to the challenge. (Hayden Casey’s sets hint at the era without being fussy, and Nita Cadenhead’s vintage costumes are handsomely detailed.)
Sinan Beskok (lately seen in Rover Dramawerk’s Lobby Hero) makes an excellently wide-eyed (who, me?) Jack Worthing, a young gentleman who has deftly compartmentalized his life by inventing a rowdy younger brother named Ernest. To get away from the pesky duties of his country life—he’s in charge of a manor house and a pretty, impatient-to-grow-up ward, Cecily Cardew (Marianne Bray)—Jack only needs to arrange a telegram about “Ernest’s” latest wickedness, and catch a train to London. In the city, Jack stays at the posh bachelor flat of his friend Algy—Algernon Moncrieff, played by Tom Pinney—and woos Gwendolen Fairfax (Dani Chambers), whose forceful mother is Algy’s Aunt Augusta (aka Lady Bracknell, played with scary, hilarious dignity by Stacey Calvert).
Okay, everyone on the same page? It sounds confusing, but the characters (and what they’re up to) are soon sorted out. The plot thickens: Algy confronts Jack about a woman named “Cecily.” He’s found Jack’s lost cigarette case, with a loving inscription from the mysterious Miss C. Aha! Jack is hiding his country life from his city friends too—it isn’t just a one-way deception. Jack is indignant at being grilled by Algy—and the more he evades, the more Algy wants to head for the “manor house” in the country to see what’s what, and who’s who.
And so it goes. The two young ladies meet, quarrel, and become fast friends, of course. (Bray and Chambers make a funny, engaging duo.) Out in the country, Cecily has a prim but easily agitated governess, Miss Prism (Dale Kral), who has eyes for the local vicar, Rev. Chasuble (Brian Kral). And Jack’s country butler Merriman (George Phillips) is even less talkative than Algy’s “man” in town.
Before things are set to rights, the story will involve (in no particular order): handbags, cucumber sandwiches, imaginary friends, girls who adore the name “Ernest”, romantic novels, train stations, perambulators, sudden (fake) death, and the “Christian” names of generals. It’s all bonkers, of course, but in the politest way—and though the laughs aren’t of the knee-slapping variety, this Victorian farce (subtitled A Trivial Comedy for Serious Persons) is still full of life and fizz.
WHEN: August 25-September 17
WHERE: 2501 N. Main Street, Euless TX
WEB: uprighttheatre.org
