Call Of The Wilde Interplayers Ensemble Offers Oscar Wilde’s Masterpiece ‘Importance Of Being Earnest’
The Interplayers Ensemble’s production of Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest,” which opens Friday, couldn’t have arrived at a better time.
It comes in the middle of an Oscar Wilde resurgence on both sides of the pond. Wilde, the famously flamboyant Irish wit, is still hot at the box office despite having been dead for 97 years.
A play about Wilde’s notorious trials, “Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde,” is an offBroadway smash in New York. Meanwhile, an upcoming movie about Wilde’s life, titled “Wilde,” promises to be a major Oscar contender, if you’ll pardon the pun. Wilde is played by British actorwriter Stephen Fry (best known as Jeeves on “Jeeves and Wooster” on PBS).
So the opening production of the Interplayers Ensemble’s season will give us all a chance to see what all the fuss is about.
This brilliant 1894 social satire is, without question, Wilde’s masterpiece. Few plays have been so universally praised, both at the time it was released and in subsequent decades. Here’s what critics have written about it over the years:
1909: “What keeps the play so amazingly fresh is not the inlaid wit, but the humour, the ever-fanciful and inventive humour, irradiating every scene.” - Max Beerbohm
1947: “There couldn’t be anything in the theatre much more delightful than John Gielgud’s enchanting production of Oscar Wilde’s masterpiece, if only for its zestful creation of that wonderful Wildean world of wit, beauty, charm and grace, where every man is debonair and epigrammatic and every woman lovely.” - Richard Watts
1983: “Few comedies in the English stage have such wit, elegance and theatrical dexterity.” - The Oxford Companion to the Theatre
Get the idea? The key word here is “wit,” a superior creature to its cousin, comedy.
If all of that sounds too high-brow, remember that this play is essentially pure low-brow farce in structure. It is about a man named John Worthing who pretends that he has a wicked brother named Ernest. Ernest, of course, turns out to be John. Meanwhile, Algernon Moncrieff also has invented someone, an invalid named Bunbury. The lies and deceptions become tangled in the finest farce fashion, although Wilde somehow makes this into something far superior to farce.
As Beerbohm once wrote, Wilde has picked up an “ordinary clod,” turned it over in his hands like a magician and produced a “dazzling prism.”
The word “debonair” might as well have been invented for this play. However, those who know Wilde’s history can’t help but feel some darkness welling up behind the light-hearted banter.
The year this play was first produced, Wilde was convicted of the crime of homosexuality and sentenced to two years hard labor. A broken man, he died soon after his release.
The Interplayers production features a number of Interplayers veterans, including R. Marquam Krantz as John Worthing, Richard R. Hamblin as Algernon and Kelly Lloyd as Gwendolyn. The cast also includes Erin Merritt, Patt Blem, Gail Smith-Reynolds, William C. Marlowe, Gary Pierce and George Spelvin.
The director is Interplayers co-founder and managing artistic director Robert A. Welch.
Interplayers is Spokane’s resident professional theater, located at 174 S. Howard in downtown Spokane.
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Color Photos
MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: On stage “The Importance of Being Earnest” runs Friday and Saturday and then continues Tuesdays through Saturdays until Oct. 11. Curtain times are 8 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays and 7:30 p.m. on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. Matinees will be at 2 p.m. on Sept. 20, 24 and 27. Tickets: From $11.50 to $16.60. Call 455-PLAY.