The Importance of Being Earnest

The Importance of Being Earnest: 

A Trivial Comedy for Serious People

by Oscar Wilde

Directed by Stephen Cox / Produced by Alan Duda

November 1 – 16, 2024

Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm; Sundays November 3 & 10 at 2pm

General Admission $24; Senior/Military $22; Child/Student $12

Sometimes called the greatest comedy of the English stage, this is an absolutely hilarious, satirical farce from the supremely witty pen of Oscar Wilde, which skewers 1895 England’s rigid social conventions, mores and romantic ideals. Conventions, mores and ideals all of which, moreover, have parallels in today’s society.

Two young men about town, Jack and Algernon, lead double lives to evade unwanted social obligations, both assuming the name and fictitious identity of Jack’s disreputable, younger brother Ernest. While doing so, they both fall in love with women who have firmly, resolved to love only someone of the name of Ernest. Their quest for true love and happiness is further complicated by the opposition of the domineering enforcer of social rectitude, Lady Bracknell (Algernon’s aunt and the mother of Jack’s love), who emphatically disapproves of Jack’s origin as an infant found in a handbag in the cloakroom of Victoria station!

CAST

Lane ………………………..…….… Nathan Rosen
Algernon Moncrieff ……………….. Lucian Clarkewallis
John Worthing, J.P. ………………. Michael McCarthy
Lady Bracknell …………………….. Sarah Schauffer
Hon. Gwendolen Fairfax ………… Jenn Robinson
Cecily Cardew …………..………… Celia Richardson
Miss Prism …………………………. Cathy Barth
Rev. Canon Chasuble, D.D. …….. Stuart Fischer
Merriman ………………..…………. Chris Dullnig

Photo credit (all images): Wes Dennis