What’s in a name? A lot, according to the Long Beach Shakespeare’s Company’s (LBSC) production of Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest.” The play plays on names and strange social conventions of upper-class British society circa 1895. But it’s the acting that takes center stage in LBSC’s version, with a great cast that seems to delight in portraying their confused characters.
The first 15 minutes does suffer from weaker sound quality—perhaps because the two initial actors are further back on the stage at that point—and their British-ish accents confound YouTube’s auto-captioning. But stay tuned! Things get more interesting once other characters arrive, and all voices get more distinct in subsequent scenes set closer to the front of the stage.
The rest of the play is fun to watch and well-paced. Jack Worthing (Mikael Mattsson) is an aristocrat who tells his friend Algernon (Jonah Goger) that though he lives in a country manor with his young ward Cecily (Maroon Stranger), he sometimes goes to London to get away, saying he’s visiting a fictitious brother named Ernest. Cecily thinks Ernest is real and is rather enamored of Ernest’s “wicked” ways that Jack is supposedly amending.
Jack soon proposes to Algernon’s cousin Gwendolen (Annie Quigley), who really, really likes the name Ernest, so he pretends it’s his own.
Similar to Jack, when Algernon wants to get away, he tells his Aunt Augusta Bracknell (Sarah Hoeven), that he is visiting a fictitious sick friend named Bunbury, which becomes a running joke. Eventually, Algernon shows up at Jack’s place to check out Cecily, saying he is Jack’s brother Ernest. Of course, Cecily falls for him amid some heavy flirting.
Cecily and Gwendolen have to eventually straighten out who, if anyone, is Ernest, and it’s up to Aunt Augusta—the stalwart preserver of societal values—to decide who will marry whom.
Along the way, we get a whole lot of farcical insight into the nonsensical nature of the upper class—from how marriage is arranged, to how a person’s worth is measured, to which tea sandwich is more fashionable: cucumber or butter. Many statements, especially from the women characters, are logically backward, adding to the farce and reinforcing their shallowness.
The play is subtitled “A Trivial Comedy for Serious People,” but even that is somewhat reversed logically in that it’s more like a serious comedy about trivial people.
Directed by LBSC Artistic Director Brando Cutts, all the actors pull off the inanity with aplomb. They are also well cast, with Jack and Gwendolen similarly genteel and Algernon and Cecily more robust and passionate. Though Stranger as Cecily wears a dress after playing swashbuckling male characters in previous LBSC productions, she brings the same physicality and also comedic sense, as does Goger as Algernon.
All the other players similarly embody their characters, along with their foibles, noses slightly up the whole time. Hoeven adroitly carries Lady Bracknell’s Queen Victoria-esque demeanor, and Lecia Papadopoulos’s precision as Cecily’s governess Miss Prism is a pleasure to hear. Rick Kopps, as the priest preparing to baptize both men as Ernest, is refreshingly natural, the only one not feigning an accent.
Sets (Nicole Braucher) are fittingly designed, evoking each of the four scenes well and somehow expanding the stage of the intimate Helen Borgers Theatre. Victorian era suits and long dresses (Dana Leach) are suitably colorful—bright red for Lady Bracknell, peach for Gwendolyn and purple for Cecily—without being distracting.
Despite those first few minutes, this production is another feather in the cap for LBSC, continuing its valiant staging of plays throughout the pandemic to transport us away for a while through theatre. If there’s a message in “The Importance of Being Earnest”—besides the one in its title—it’s that silliness is still important. All of these amazing actors seem to know that and do their utmost to make us feel it, too.
Long Beach Shakespeare Company’s “The Importance of Being Earnest” is available to stream through Sunday, June 27. Tickets are $35 per household for unlimited viewing, available at LBShakespeare.org.
