Cecily (Riley Krull) and Gwendolen (Mindy Lym) both fall in love with men they believe are named “Ernest”
in the World Premiere musical BEING EARNEST, presented by TheatreWorks April 3 – 28
at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts. Photo credit: Tracy Martin
BEING EARNEST: Musical. By Paul Gordon and Jay Gruska, adapted from Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest.” Directed by Robert Kelley. TheatreWorks, Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro St., Mountain View. (650) 463-1960. www.theatreworks.org. Through April 28, 2013
BEING EARNEST at TheatreWorks has charming star quality.
There are others who have undertaken to put Oscar Wilde’s near perfect 1895 satirical drawing room comedy The Importance of Being Earnest to music with a modicum of success. The first was in 1960 when Ernest in Love (Earnest without the ‘a’) received laudatory reviews off Broadway and move uptown where it played for about four months. The next incarnation was as a London musical simply called Earnest (the ‘a’ reinserted) that moved on into theatrical oblivion. Paul Gordon and Jay Gruska have kept the ‘a” in the title but their marvelous TheatreWorks’ production under Robert Kelly’s spot on direction only deserves a solid ‘B’.
Oscar Wilde’s play has a riotous plot with satirical characters that beg to cavort in gorgeous costumes trying to do justice to Wilde’s well known witticisms. Many of those (in)famous lines appear in the libretto and often provide titles for songs. Recognizing the necessity to incorporate the best (they are all good) of those wicked lines into the play the opening scene of the second act is devoted to the ensemble cast of seven quoting many of them to the audience with a photo of Wilde projected on the back scrim. It is a great touch and I would bet director Kelly had a hand in it.
The ludicrous convoluted storyline of two supercilious English girls who can only love a man with the name of Earnest has been transplanted to 60s London, specifically Soho’s Carnaby Street. It is a stretch of the imagination that there are similarities between 1965, the time period of this musical adaptation, and beginning of the Victorian Era but the authors wish the audience to think so as an explanation for the style/intent of the music.
The music is extremely clever and the lyrics incorporate Wilde’s words as cues for the actors but the final result does not reach the level of sophistication of Alan Jay Lerner’s use of Shaw’s dialog in My Fair Lady. The major actors (Hayden Tee as Jack, Euan Morton as Algernon, Riley Krull as Cecily and Mindy Lym as Gwendolen) are expert singers and the entire performance exudes good nature humor that carries through from opening number to an interesting Shavian type epilog with slide projections informing us that Wilde was right on, and it is true daughters become what their mothers are. This brings us to local favorite Maureen McVerry being miscast or misdirected as the formidable Lady Bracknell. Audience favorites are Brian Herndon playing multiple roles and Diana Torres Koss as Miss Prism who left poor baby Jack (Earnest) in a handbag at Victoria Station.
Dr. Chausable (Brian Herndon) and
Miss Prism (Diana Torres Koss)
Placing the action in the Carnaby Street Era (that has since faded) allows costume designer Fumiko Bielefeldt to go wild starting with gorgeous Mondrian style dresses in the early scenes maintaining the high style throughout the show. Joe Ragey’s set with a central stairway allows the girls to use it as a runway for Bielefeldt’s fashion show. Running time two hours and 10 minutes.
Kedar K. Adour, MD
Courtesy of www.theatreworldinternetmagazine.com
