The Importance of Being Earnest

In the comedy/drama slot for our 2010 Summer Season is Oscar Wilde’s most enduring play The Importance of Being Earnest. This Victorian comedy, subtitled “A trivial comedy for serious people”, is full of wit and deception -- as fresh today as when it first appeared on the British stage in 1895. Two pretty girls have fallen in love with men who both claim the name of Ernest. These young bachelors are actually best friends and, unknown to the other, each have created a double life for themselves to escape unpleasant social obligations. In this parody of life in the upper-class, they go to outrageous lengths to woo their ladies and then discover past events that could cloud their future.

Oscar Wilde was born in 1854 in Dublin, Ireland, to a family of society, and he earned degrees from Trinity and Oxford. Wilde established himself as a poet, journalist, and short story writer, and he went on to excel as a playwright. He became interested and worked to improve the injustices of society, and yet wrestled with his own personal identity.

Perhaps the reason The Importance of Being Earnest has endured is that it continues to make us laugh 110 years after it first appeared. Wilde’s hilarious romance is considered by some to be one of the best stage comedies ever, and it is produced with regularity in college and regional theaters. It came to the American Broadway stage in 1947, led by John Gielgud in the role of John (“Jack”) Worthing. In 1948 the play won the only Tony Award ever given to an Outstanding Foreign Company. A movie of the play made in 1952 starred Michael Redgrave and Edith Evans. More recently a film version was made in 2002 starring Rupert Everett, Colin Firth, Reese Witherspoon, and Judi Dench.