Ernest in Name, But How Earnest in Manner?: Acting in Wilde’s Comedy

Abstract

The Importance of Being Earnest is the most performed of Wilde’s social comedies. Robert Tanitch records some 117 productions between George Alexander’s first staging of the play at the St. James’s Theatre in 1895 and 1998, when he concluded his census of performances.¹ They range from Britain and Ireland through Europe and North America to Australia, and the number includes several plays such as Tom Stoppard’s Jumpers (1974) and Mark Ravenhill’s Handbag (1998), which take their inspiration from Wilde’s comedy and enter into a dialogue with it. My own similar search through the newspaper criticisms included in Theatre Review since 2000 showed a count of some 15 productions in England, Scotland, and Wales over a span of 14 years. No comedies in the English language other than Shakespeare’s can match this show of popularity. There have been at least five filmed versions, twelve television and many radio adaptations, thirteen musicals (mostly American, all flops), some two operas, and a reduction of the play to a monologue for Lady Bracknell. Cast lists for the various stage and screen productions reveal a roll call of the finest actors worldwide who have essayed the various major roles, particularly that of Lady Bracknell, which has attracted five dames of the British Empire (Edith Evans, Flora Robson, Judi Dench, Joan Plowright, and Maggie Smith) and three celebrated actors at the zenith of their careers (William Hutt, Brian Bedford, and Geoffrey Rush), playing en travesti (though not one of them resorted to any hint of the dame-figure of traditional British pantomime).²