The Dramat’s fall experimental adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, directed by Miranda Rizzolo, ES ’15, is both a visual and acoustic feast. Characters drape across furniture in dressing gowns, storm in and out of rooms, and address each other with the kind of exaggerated theatricality that one hopes made up Wilde’s daily life. The adaptation is marked with strong performances all around, complementing Wilde’s trademark one-liners, and the play also feels fresh thanks to Rizzolo’s directorial choices—no British accents, musical interludes that include Kanye West’s “All of the Lights,” and scene changes that are performed by the actors in character. For a play that first debuted in 1895, these small decisions remind us why we find Wilde timelessly funny—identity crises, social expectations, and romantic trials are still relevant to our lives. The result is light, fizzy, and enjoyably chaotic.
Earnest tells the story of friends Algernon and Jack (Otis Blum, BK ’15, and Adam Lohman, JE ’18, respectively), bachelors who use a variety of tactics to avoid responsibility—such as assuming false identities—but end up falling in love with each other’s relatives. Blum and Lohman have a strong onstage rapport, and their frustration and comic banter are well performed, if slightly over-rehearsed at times. Lauren Modiano, MC ’17, is a comic standout as Algernon’s nonsensical cousin and Jack’s love interest, Gwendolyn. However, Eric Sirakian, JE ’15, as Lady Bracknell unquestionably makes the show. In a play that ultimately pokes fun at false identities and provides snide commentary on gender roles, the casting of a man in a woman’s part is especially funny, and Sirakian perfectly embodies Lady Bracknell’s moral outrage and mercenary spirit. Particularly entertaining is an exchange between Lady Bracknell and Cecily (Lucy Fleming, SY ’16), Algernon’s love interest, where Sirakian confidently informs Fleming that age doesn’t matter—“London society is full of women… who have, of their own free choice, remained 35 for years!”
So much of the play depends on pulling off the ending’s outrageous deus ex machina, in which Jack and Algernon are revealed to be cousins, and Sirakian and Lohman manage it deftly, with wry glances at the audience that accept that we’re all in on the joke. At just two hours, it’s a play that seems to end too soon. As Wilde wrote, “It is always painful to part from people whom one has known for a very brief space of time,” and the line rings especially true for Rizzolo’s triumphant adaptation.