SHEILA CHISHOLM reviews (November 2014)

​ARTS - Stel­lar cast earnestly cap­tures Os­car Wilde’s wicked hu­mour.
THE IM­POR­TANCE OF BE­ING EARNEST. Three-act com­edy by Os­car Wilde. Direc­tor Bar­bara Basel. Set de­sign Alas­tair Duff. Cos­tumes Bar­bara Basel and team. ​Light­ing/sound John Blewett. Pre­sented by The Muizen­berg Dra­matic So­ci­ety (MADS). At the Masque Theatre un­til Satur­day. 
​THE IM­POR­TANCE OF BE­ING EARNEST. Three-act com­edy by Os­car Wilde. Direc­tor Bar­bara Basel. Set de­sign Alas­tair Duff. Cos­tumes Bar­bara Basel and team. Light­ing/sound John Blewett. Pre­sented by The Muizen­berg Dra­matic So­ci­ety (MADS). At the Masque Theatre un­til Satur­day. SHEILA CHISHOLM re­views.
DE­SCRIBED as a “triv­ial play for se­ri­ous peo­ple” Os­car Wilde’s last play – The Im­por­tance of Be­ing Earnest – found in­stant suc­cess when first pro­duced in Lon­don in 1895. This, de­spite the be­gin­ning of court cases that would mark Wilde’s down­fall.
But this satir­i­cal com­edy – in which pro­tag­o­nists skil­fully main­tain per­sonae mock­ing the “up­per classes”– be­came even more pop­u­lar when re­leased as a movie in 1952. Adapted and di­rected by An­thony Asquith, and pro­duced by Teddy Baird, the stel­lar cast – headed by Edith Evans as Lady Au­gusta Brack­nell and Mar­garet Ruther­ford as Miss Leti­tia Prism – be­came hard acts to fol­low.
MADS di­rec­tor, Bar­bara Basel, un­der­stand­ing that try­ing to echo those mem­o­rable por­tray­als could spell dis­as­ter, adroitly guided her stel­lar cast into por­tray­ing their char­ac­ter­i­sa­tions as they “saw” them. Yet, (al­though the pace of the sec­ond act could be crisper), Basel en­sured no one lost Wilde’s unique po­etic ca­dences of his rhyth­mic witty lan­guage.
Set against Alas­tair Duff ’s black and white flats (de­signed in English il­lus­tra­tor Aubrey Beard­s­ley style) we meet Al­ger­non Mon­crieff ’s manser­vant Lane (Andy Rabagliati) lay­ing a tea-ta­ble while Al­ger­non (new­comer Mike De­war) munches cu­cum­ber sand­wiches meant for his aunt – Lady Au­gusta Brack­nell (Mi­randa Lewis) – and her daugh­ter Gwen­dolen Fair­fax (Sara Kate de Beer). Un­in­vited Earnest/ Jack/ John Wor­thing (David Sharpe) ar­rives.
He’s fallen for Gwen­dolen and has come from his coun­try Manor House to pro­pose. Meet­ing with un­ex­pected op­po­si­tion from Al­ger­non the pair “po­litely” spar un­til it is re­vealed that Jack is known as Earnest in town and Jack in the coun­try. It’s also dis­closed that Jack has a pretty 18 year-old ward called Ce­cily Cardew (Grace Brain) who’s gov­erness Miss Prism (Jane Co­hen) “is a lady of high­est re­pute.”
To tell more is to spoil Wilde’s plot. But men­tion must be made of Lewis as Lady Brack­nell. Bril­liantly played as a snob­bish, mer­ce­nary aris­to­crat and Gwen­dolen’s dom­i­neer­ing mother she su­perbly timed her punch lines to em­pha­size Wilde’s wicked hu­mour.
Co­hen’s Miss Prism de­lighted de­liv­er­ing one cliche af­ter an­other while twit­ter­ing around Rev Canon Cha­suble (Richard Higgs) who se­cretly re­turns her ro­man­tic feel­ings.
Un­for­tu­nately, de Beer’s un­flat­ter­ing cos­tumes rather de­tracted from Gwen­dolen’s fix­a­tion on the name Earnest. And she ap­peared more sexy than flir­ta­tious in her first scene with Sharpe. But she, to­gether with the tal­ented Brain, cap­tured the essence of in­jured dig­nity when they ganged up against Jack and Al­ger­non, stat­ing “quite cat­e­gor­i­cally” nei­ther could marry some­one not named Earnest.
De­war epit­o­mised a wealthy, idle, self-cen­tred, aris­to­crat. While Sharpe brought amus­ing feigned pathos to his scene an­nounc­ing his brother’s death.
Basel and her cast are com­mended for cap­tur­ing the pe­riod’s man­ners to present a highly sat­is­fac­tory pro­duc­tion of Os­car Wilde’s The Im­por­tance of Be­ing Earnest.