The Importance of Being Ernest Suffers From a Badly Conceived Staging.

The new theatre Plosive productions has created a monster!  They have taken a talented cast, a most witty classic of the Western English language stage, and turned the performance into a mish-mash of styles and staging errors that even makes the good actors look weak.  Despite moments that do work, one has the feeling that generally, something has gone terribly wrong.

Of course The storyline is beautifully crafted by the playwright.  Mr.  Worthy who becomes Earnest in the city and Jack in the country, is eventually upstaged by his rakish cousin Algernon who turns up under an assumed name, to get the girl, who happens to be Jack’s ward Cecily Cardew. It’s full of plot twists, witty lines and hidden meanings about suppressed identities which always appealed to Oscar Wilde’s sense of provocative humour, for obvious reasons.

It’s curious that Third Wall Theatre also chose this play during the first year of its existence and had difficulties with it of a similar nature. I’m not saying one must imitate a traditional British staging of the play. There have been versions with Lady Bracknell as a man, (Brian Bedford is the one which comes to mind), there have been stagings with an all-male cast, and there have certainly been others.  Wilde like Shakespeare is a challenge to any director who is testing his abilities to produce a coherent aesthetic style no matter what it may be.  No matter how outrageous or ‘different’ the results, it makes no difference as long as there is a sense that the director has a global vision of his material and things fit together within that vision.  I love to see Shakespeare turned upside down and people like Peter Sellars, or that Indian company who did the Midsummer Night’s Dream at the NAC last year, or the   Haitian company who did Macbeth at the Segal Centre last year, have done wonders with Shakespeare’s plays.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. The reasons however, can be obscure and one always tries to understand what makes such attempts work.

I did not feel that David Whiteley’s version of Wilde’s play worked.  He did set it in British Colonial India. No problem at all. He did decide to emphasize the humour.  Normal because it is a comedy. However, it all appeared so awkward and incoherent that much of the staging felt like a series of accidents that had not been thought out. 

When Stewart Matthews, who plays the wayward Jack/Earnest made his first entrance that was the initial shock.  He was wearing a huge baggy suit with big clunky American style shoes and speaking with a British accent. The play instantly became a clown show, or else there was a problem with the costumes or else no attention was paid to the costumes at all! Then Garrett Quirk began his performance as Algernon. Both Quirk and Matthews are fine actors so I don’t blame them at all.  Quirk rattled on like a train and I barely understood him, especially when his sentences fizzled out at the end.  Opening night nerves?  An English accent which he didn’t quite dominate? Or else that plate of cucumber sandwiches which he kept stuffing into his mouth, something else that hindered his tongue no doubt. It is very difficult to eat and swallow and talk at the same time.   One usually only tries to give the impression one is wolfing down food on stage but not really swallowing it and I kept expecting him to choke on those cucumbers. That would have served him right for not saving any for his aunty, the Lady Bracknell, played with much poise by Kel Parsons.

In general, the comedy came in many forms. There was slapstick, there was farce, there was British vaudeville and even bits of American screen comic routines like Laurel and Hardy. There was Teri Loretto who had a performance all of her own as a Scottish Nannie Miss Prism.  Her thick Scottish accent and little bits of mimic were great fun,  and she and Chris Ralph (Dr. Chasuble)  made a fine duo but what play were they  in?  In fact everyone did more or less his or her own thing, which meant that when an Indian servant wandered in speaking with an East Indian accent; it was perfectly in keeping with the spirit of the play. By the way the brief appearances by Henna Kaur Sodhi were very good and I would like to see her again on stage. She showed us she had a lot of poise, a beautiful voice and lots of  presence in her short appearances. What worked best was the great Bollywood fiesta where everyone got into the spirit of the happy end and the dancing really meant something.

However, on a less fun filled note, there were multiple missed cues which ruptured the rhythm of the dialogue and timing is so vital in this play.  There was that wooden platform built in the middle of the stage. Whenever the actors crossed it, the clumping of shoes echoed in my ears!  If tap dancers had made a sudden appearance on that wooden floor, I would not have been surprised, especially given that Walt Disney set which did nothing for the show at all. Unless of course  the director and set designer  actually had in mind a comic book style  caricature of Wilde’s play but then the acting was not coherently stylized enough, nor was it generally physical enough.

This production was a theatrical free for all which is the best indication that the director was trying a hit and miss aesthetic.  Sorry, to my mind he missed. And it was all the more annoying that this was the inaugural performance of what appears to be a very promising new company in Ottawa. It has some fine talent in its midst, it even has a first class translator in its midst, a translator who is also a rather good actor.  However, The Importance of Being Earnest was just beyond this director’s reach.   

The Importance of Being Earnest

by Oscar Wilde

directed by David Whiteley

a production of Plosive Productions 

in collaboration with Gladstone Productions and SevenThirty Production  

Set and Costumes: Andrea Roberston

Lighint Design: John Solmon

Choreographer: Kuljit Sokhi

Cast:

Sean Conforti (Lane)

Garrett Quirk  (Algernon Moncrieff)

Stewart Matthews (Jacke Worthing)

Kel Parsons (Lady  Bracknell)

Katie Bunting (Gwendolyn Fairfax)

Henna Kaur Sodhi (Merriman)

Teri Loretto-Valentik (Miss Prism)

Bronwyn Steinberg (Cecil Cardew)

Chris Ralph ( Rev. Chasuble)

Sheldon Heard (Musician)