Preview: the classic The Importance of Being Earnest is as witty, clever and precise today as it was in London in 1895

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Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest has delighted audiences around the world for 127 years and is considered the British Victorian playwright’s greatest achievement.

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It’s a farce about a pair of elegant English gentlemen who decide it’s time to get married. John Worthing (Jack) is proposing to his best friend Algernon Moncrieff’s niece, Gwendolen Fairfax, and Algernon plans to woo Jack’s ward, Cecily Cardew. The problem is that both women promise to marry only one man named Ernest, which means that both Jack and Algernon have to be renamed somehow, very quickly.

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It’s nonsense, to be sure, but Wilde himself said that The Importance of Being Earnest is a trivial comedy for serious people and that all the nonsense gave him license to mock Victorian morals, conventions, and attitudes.

The Importance of Being Earnest introduces Wilde’s greatest comic creation in Lady Augusta Bracknell, Gwendolen’s mother, a powerful, arrogant and ruthless woman whom Algernon calls a gorgon. Even if they could change their names, the men will have to earn their approval.

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Lady Bracknell has been played by such renowned actors as Judi Dench, Edith Evans, Maggie Smith and even David Suchet stopped playing Hercule Poirot to play her dressed as Brian Bedford did at the Stratford Festival in Canada. Lady Bracknell has proven to be a dream role for mature actors of both genders.

In Theater Calgary’s version of The Importance of Being Earnest, running at Arts Commons’ Max Bell Theater through November 19, Valerie Planche will revel in Lady Bracknell’s extravagant excesses and self-righteous pronouncements.

“Playing Wilde demands a lot from the actors. His language is so precise, so witty and so clever that for it to shine as it should, we have to be acrobats,” says Planche, who, last season, directed Theater Calgary’s production of Steel Magnolias.

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Algernon can see Lady Bracknell as a terrifying gorgon, but not Planche.

“She is a mother who is trying to make a good match for her daughter and that means finding a man, not only with position, but also with money. Lady Bracknell knows the possibility of running out of money and how important it is to always maintain the illusion of wealth.

“I’m going to defend her as a mother with Victorian maternal instincts, which means having good nannies and good governesses,” says Planche, adding that “Lady Bracknell is a paragon of Victorian virtue and that’s what makes her a monster at Algernon.” and Wilde’s eyes and what makes her an incredulous laughing matter for the audience”.

Actors often look within themselves to find similarities they can tap into to play a character, but Planche says she and Lady Bracknell have very little in common.

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“I don’t have kids or money, so those aren’t starting points. Perhaps she and I share a kind of blindness. She lives in a world of denial. She knows that change is shaking the cage, but she prefers to cling to the security of the past. Acknowledging that rattle is when we both put on the blinders.

“Like Lady Bracknell, when I look at what’s going on in our world these days, I just want to drop everything and watch a few episodes of Seinfeld.”

Planche says that she finds it easier to laugh at herself than Lady Bracknell.

“In Earnest, Wilde asks us to laugh at ourselves and that’s something I can do. Through Lady Bracknell, Wilde was mocking the very people who came to see the play. What he says and seems to believe is so outrageous, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t thought this way a bit at some point.”

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Planche says it’s hard to find contemporary parallels for the characters in The Importance of Being Earnest because they’re so specifically Victorian, but wonders if perhaps “Cecily could just be Meghan Markle to Algernon’s Prince Harry.”

Joining Planche in The Importance of Being Earnest are Christopher Duthie as Algernon and Michael Rolfe as Jack with Emily Howard as Gwendolen and Kathleen Faith Ballangan as Cecily. Rounding out the cast are Kevin Rothery, Duval Lang, Shari Wattling and David Sklar.

Tickets and more information are available at theatrecalgary.com.

Theater Calgary’s The Importance of Being Earnest runs at Arts Commons’ Max Bell Theater through November 19.

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