by Oscar Wilde
Directed by Brian Bedford
At the Avon Theatre
June 2-October 30, 2009

   Whether a director uses Chekhov (as Robin Phillips did) or Mozart (as Brian Bedford does this season) as a touchstone in order to find a way into the spirit of Wilde’s greatest comedy, the simple fact is that Earnest is a high comedy, not a farce (though it has farcical elements), and depends on style rather than sentiment. Living dangerously, Bedford has gambled by directing himself in the role of Lady Bracknell, one of the greatest comic stage characters in the English language, and, happily, he has won—though at some cost to his own performance. Bedford fully understands the grain and temper of Wilde’s era and of the great writer’s epigrammatic wit. Especially in this play and his essays, Wilde glorified cleverness by ensuring that it was perfectly phrased. As Lady Bracknell declares, her society lives in “an age of surfaces,” and Wilde’s dialogue lacquers these surfaces by smartly brittle repartee. The script is a luxuriant verbal score, perfectly attuned to the manner of its period, and calibrated to make the serious seem trivial and the trivial serious. In his program note, Bedford quotes Auden in calling it the purest example in English literature of “verbal opera.” “There is a lightness to this text, coupled with an unrelenting energy and tremendous variety: qualities that are all quintessentially Mozartian.”

   It is a verbal score that almost has no equal, except, perhaps, in Congreve or the very best of Coward, but where Congreve’s can seem intricately complex to master, and Coward’s ornamental or superficial, Wilde’s glitters brilliantly and spontaneously. It remains clever, of course, because this is artificial comedy, but the cleverness of phrase has another dynamic function. It serves as a mask for subterfuge and hypocrisy. John Worthing’s “improbable explanations” about his mysterious brother, and Algernon’s about his invalid friend Bunbury speak to a specific need to escape the pressures and tedium of social and moral conformity. They are lies that indulge a need for romantic fabrication, just as Cecily’s and Gwendolyn’s romantic fancies are attempts to achieve gilded pleasures, despite the constraints of their guardians and society. 

   Bedford’s production emphasizes the double life of John Worthing, finding a root in Wilde’s own double life. His version is always fine and often dazzling, but, surprisingly, his own performance as Lady Bracknell sacrifices some of the most celebrated comic climaxes for later rewards. Garbed in Desmond Heeley’s superb costumes and hats, he looks like a straitlaced Victorian matriarch, but his modified falsetto and practised mannerisms never seem formidable enough to turn him into a Gorgon or anything approaching the late Dame Edith Evans in the role, which was much the same thing. Nor is he as comic as the late William Hutt was in the role. Bedford’s poker face, mastery of the long pause and delayed climax, and his superb modulation equip him well for a character study, but the handbag scene falls a little flat because of his insistence on diminuendo rather than amplification. He sometimes seems to be enjoying the character’s wit rather more than he should. He is not the type of Lady Bracknell whose arm you would hesitate to take on the way to dinner or a music recital.

   As irrepressibly mischievous Algernon, Mike Shara is to the manner born and he makes an excellent sparring partner for Ben Carlson’s first-rate Worthing, a handsome man about town whose skill in lying is severely tested. Andrea Runge looks too mature for Cecily, his ward, but she scores when it counts, and as first her enemy and then her “sister,” Sara Topham is a delectable Gwendolyn—especially in Act 2, which becomes simply the best Act 2 of this play I have seen on stage. Never over-cultivated in her emphases, she is convincingly sophisticated and naïve, an endearing romancer as well as a sharply self-assured young lady to whom facts are merely degraded truth. Stephen Ouimette’s Canon Chasuble has a spindly-legged walk to further his comedy, and Sarah Dodd makes a truly wonderful Miss Prism, channeling some of Maggie Smith’s comic eccentricities, especially her nasal tone, but to this she adds menopausal hot flashes when in the company of Chasuble. As far as the lower orders are concerned, Tim MacDonald makes a rather dry Merriman, but Robert Persichini’s Lane is a lumbering, amusingly slow-footed fellow with a quick mind to keep pace with his master, Algernon.

   Desmond Heeley’s sets show what stage painting can do in support of an age of surfaces, and his garden setting has his signature breath-taking prettiness and elegance. Kevin Fraser’s lighting lends the stage pictures further support.

photos: David Hou

pic 1 (L-R): Sara Topham (Gwendolyn), Ben Carlson (Worthing), Brian Bedford (Lady Bracknell), Sarah Dodd (Prism)

pic 2 (L-R): Stephen Ouimette (Chasuble), Sarah Dodd (Prism), Ben Carlson (Worthing), Sara Topham (Gwendolyn), Brian Bedford (Lady Bracknell), Mike Shara (Algernon), Andrea Runge (Cecily)




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