Review: THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST and the Importance of Purposeful Triviality

This post, which contains my thoughts on UCSB's production of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, marks my 50th article as the BroadwayWorld representative for the Santa Barbara region. Perhaps I'm not a representative in the way that a mayor is; no one voted me here, I just took over. I'm more like a regional dictator of one particular corner of the theatre-themed room of the internet. I rule as an enthusiastic observer with a penchent for theatro-babble rhetoric. I'm genuinely eager to see anything and everything--I look forward to whatever weird and wonderful performances the Santa Barbara theatre community can create.

This leads me to my interpretation of the UCSB Theatre department's (first ever!) production of The Importance of Being Earnest, directed by UCSB institution Simon Williams. Wilde's play, which unapologetically displays the more trivial nature of Victorian culture, has been widely produced for the last hundred years. It's a staple of the English-speaking theatrical repertory in the way that "Don't Stop Believing" is a staple of the whiskey-drinker's karaoke repertory. Mercifully, Earnest has the potential to be a great play--the characters all share Wilde's gift for witticism; the play is purposeful in its absurdity; and it's intelligently written. Imagine this: an absentminded governess inattentively puts her novel manuscript into a pram, and her charge, an infant, into a valise...which she then leaves in a closet at the train station. The baby, named Jack, is raised by the wealthy benefactor who finds him abandoned. This is the genesis of a story in which the plot is a series of frivolous hijinks and misunderstandings revolving around the name "Earnest," set in a social environment absent of any real consequences.

The play, superficially, is essentially preposterous (though entertaining in its absurdity). However, a satirical conceit lurks within the play's seeminly trivial nature. Wilde's characters are flippant socialites with frivolous aspirations and obligations, and the play openly celebrates the petty insignificances of the culture it portrays. The initiation of the show's main conflict is the duplicitous nature of the two main characters, Jack (Zachary Macias) and Algernon (Adrian Carter), each of whom has invented a person (in Jack's case, a brother named Earnest, and in Algernon's case an invalid friend named Bunbury) for the purpose of having a ready excuse to avoid social obligations. Without fail, the cartoonish nature of this farce turns complicated when the two men, attempting to woo different women, both arrive at Jack's country home pretending to be the non-existent Earnest. The women in question, Gwendolyn (Quinlan Fitzgerald) and Cecily (Alison Wilson) (also at the country house), both believe themselves to be engaged to Earnest, albeit different Earnests. Clever bickering, bumbling justifications, and amusingly passive-aggressive insults constitute most of the action and dialogue.

UCSB's production is well directed and entertaining, though the pacing is somewhat uneven. When the dialogue is cheeky and canters assertively, the scenes are challenging and funny, and exhibit adept narrative momentum. When the dialogue decelerates to a languid, tea-drinking-in-the-afternoon pace, the tension stagnates because I'm reminded of the inanity of the situation. When some (usually expositional) excerpts lost energy, the striking contrast of superfluous subject matter as discussed using considered language and dialogue was less apparent, and the satiric element of the play lost vigor.

The characters were lively and entertaining: Gwendolyn (Fitzgerald) and Cecily (Wilson) were visions of supercilious Victorian politeness, and Jack/Earnest (Macias) and Algernon/Earnest (Carter) were appropriately insouciant and amusingly irked whenever the level of inconvenience in their farcical romantic lives escalated. Everyone was tremendously amused by their own plight--which is interesting to watch as an appreciator of the underlying emotional process of the performer, but perhaps a little too self-aware for the tone of the play. (I remain impressed by Adrian Carter's digestive excellence: he managed to eat the equivalent of an entire loaf of bread in muffins and cucumber sandwiches during the performance.)

I'm generally not partial to stories that celebrate triviality--but despite myself, I enjoyed UCSB's production of Earnest. Overall, The Importance of Being Earnest is a fun, intelligent play, and it's easy to see why it continues to be produced in popularity.

And that's number 50! 50 more to come in 2015. With any luck I'll get more interesting. And knowledgeable. That's the goal, anyway--to expand my appreciation for and comprehension of the human condition by interacting with theatrical renditions of our existence. I look forward to my own growth as an artist, and I tip my unreasonably ornate cap to the readers, actors, writers, designers, and technicians who continue to pave the road toward more thorough understanding with stones and bricks of tiny revelations.

The Importance of Being Earnest
By Oscar Wilde
Directed by Simon Williams

February 13-21
UCSB
www.theaterdance.ucsb.edu