THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST
A play that declares “We live in an age of surfaces” proves it with its machinery. The characters seem such conventional creatures that the subversion each addlepated non sequitur expresses is totally unexpected. Wilde said that “the very essence of romance is uncertainty,” but the maxim also applies to his comedy, where surprises–especially verbal surprises–are of the essence. Here, for instance, without sensing the slightest contradiction, Cecily can describe her diary as “a very young girl’s record of her own thoughts and impressions, and consequently meant for publication.”
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
What fascinates is not the question of who ends up with whom, and when and how; it’s not even Wilde’s unstoppable flow of effortless wit. It’s the sight of Wilde’s cunning poseurs dexterously and unhesitatingly replacing one fashionable deception with another serviceable lie. Earnest is packed with multilayered prevarications. (It was this calculated insincerity that made G.B. Shaw, the only critic to pan this instant hit, call Wilde’s nonsense “hateful” and “sinister” and say that it exhibited “real degeneracy.”)
Aside from the difficulty that both girls are in love with a nonexistent Ernest, the formidable Aunt Augusta (aka Lady Bracknell) refuses to allow her daughter Gwendolen to “form an alliance with a parcel”–Jack. She also wants to manage her feckless nephew Algernon’s future, and knows that his one hope for success lies in a modern marriage–i.e., a merger with money. So Lady Bracknell gives Cecily a grilling that would be cruel if it weren’t hilarious: the poor girl must prove her dowry is sufficiently comfortable and her soul sufficiently shallow to satisfy London society. Wilde concludes his hothouse hilarity with revelations every bit as contrived as the inconsequential conflicts they resolve.
Also delightful is Celene Evans, pertly puncturing fatuities as Cecily. Evans’s capricious airhead is not only believable but comparatively complex. Kate Goehring’s Gwendolen initially seems muted, even tepid (especially in light of Goehring’s considerable comic skills, recently displayed in Bailiwick Repertory’s Laughing Wild). But Goehring can snap a throwaway zinger all the way to the last row, and in her devastating tea-party squabble with Cecily, she drops the demure, dull facade and bares some teeth.
