REVIEW
The Importance of Being Earnest
Teatro La Quindicina
July 12 to 28
At Varscona Theatre
10329 – 83 Ave.
Tickets: Start at $25 visit www.teatroq.com
Launching Teatro La Quindicina’s second show of the season, Jeff Haslam’s energetic staging of The Importance of Being Earnest is a charming, effervescent production perfectly suited to kick off the summer.
Jumping straight into a jaunty pace, Haslam encourages his actors to improvise ludicrous facial expressions, mannerisms and even a dash of slapstick physicality.
The two male leads, Jack and Algernon, even break out into a couple of juvenile scuffles. However, the lively silliness somehow enhances rather than diminishes playwright Oscar Wilde’s brisk witticisms.
For the uninitiated, The Importance of Being Earnest is a farcical comedy about two 19th-century English gentlemen who invent non-existent relatives to escape boring social obligations.
Their charming lies and hypocrisy allow them to lead a double life. That is until they fall in love and are caught red-handed in a deceptive web.
On the surface, the three-act play looks like an elitist comedy of manners. But beneath the polished surface, Wilde satirizes the self-important. He ridicules all that the aristocracy puts stock in – wealth, class, parentage, social standing and privilege.
Right from the get-go, Ron Pederson as the frivolous fop Algernon Moncrieff spares no expense at presenting a charming, freeloading dandy. The bored nephew of Lady Bracknell, he drapes himself over furniture, stuffs his face with food, and nails every quip with a blasé mix of cynicism and charisma.
Through the play’s trajectory, Pederson establishes a comical double act with Mark Meer’s Jack Worthing, a straight-arrow who desperately clings to his dignity despite the escalating absurdity.
Comfortable as actors and as friends, Pederson and Meer play off each other’s strengths even to the point of loudly sparring like brothers, so much so, that at the end of the play we find out they are.
The two objects of Algernon’s and Jack’s affections are Cecily Cardew, Jack’s relatively innocent ward, and Gwendolen Fairfax, Lady Bracknell’s calculating daughter.
Both Shannon Blanchet as Cecily and Louise Lambert as Gwendolen are strong women. They know exactly who and what they want. The two ladies manipulate the situation to their advantage, and before the men realize it, the skirts control the outcome.
Cathy Derkach and Julien Arnold are cast in the caricature roles of Miss Prism and Rev. Chasuble, two older moralizers who have an awkward romantic attraction to each other.
But it was Leona Brausen’s shallow, overbearing Lady Bracknell that stole the show. Lady B., a spoof on Queen Victoria, is a woman who values wealth and pedigree while scorning positive values such as education, knowledge and good character.
In one line, Lady B. chides Algernon, saying, “Never speak disrespectfully about society. Only those who can’t get into it, do so.”
As Lady B. sweeps across the stage in an overblown costume spouting ludicrous pronouncements completely unaware of her own stupidity, Brausen’s performance is hilarious.
It also drenches the atmosphere with vulgarity. Not the vulgarity of slang, but the vulgarity of privilege showing the door to those less highly connected.
Although The Importance of Being Earnest debuted in Victorian London on Feb. 14, 1895, it still provides a somewhat anarchist spirit today.
The Importance of Being Earnest runs at Varscona Theatre until July 28.
