“The Importance of Being Earnest” On-Campus Screening

Ollie McSweeny, Contributing Writer

Last Friday at 8 pm, the Red Dragon Theater held a screening of The Importance of Being Earnest, a play written by Oscar Wilde that premiered in 1895. The filmed production was performed by the Roundabout Theater Company at the American Airlines Theater in 2011. It had been 34 years since any of Wilde’s work was last performed on stage.

The play follows the story of two men, Jack Worthing and Algernon Moncrief, who lie about their identities so that one can leave the country and go up to the town of London, and the other can leave town and go out to the country. Jack pretends that he has a brother named Earnest in London and goes by the name Earnest there. Algernon created a false, invalid friend named Bunbury, who was always extremely ill, so he could pretend to visit him in the country. The play itself is a critique of high English society at the time, as well as a somewhat negative commentary on marriage and heterosexual relationships.

This 2011 production featured three gorgeous sets for the play’s three acts, everything was flecked in paint to create an artistic and dream-like environment. It was designed to look theatrical and not necessarily realistic. This stage design made the actors stand out during their performances. The first set is Algernon Moncrief’s house, and the second and third are both outside and inside Jack Worthing’s country estate.

Two interviews were included in the screening, one before the play began and one during intermission. The first interview Brian Bedford, the director of this production, who also starred as Lady Bracknell, Algernon’s aunt, in the play. Bedford discusses how he approached playing the role of a woman, and how he drew inspiration from the authoritative women he has known personally. The screening included a time-lapse of Bedford’s transformation backstage into Lady Bracknell. They talk about Wilde’s writing of The Importance of Being Earnest, and how he was only writing it to make some money and that this play was not only a huge success but also marked his downfall as a writer.

The second interview is a meeting with a Wilde scholar, who talks about how Wilde grew up in a sophisticated English society that required him to be witty and clever. They also discuss the meanings behind some of the characters; Lady Bracknell represents society, Miss Prism represents education, and the reverend represents the church. This interview further details how his fall from fame came so soon after his other successes, like A Woman of No Importance and An Ideal Husband.

In the same year that he produced The Importance of Being Earnest, Wilde was convicted of gross indecency and was sentenced to isolation and imprisonment in Reading Gaol. He was accused of being a “somdomite” (misspelled as such) by his lover Lord Alfred Douglas’s father, the Marquess of Queensberry. Wilde took this case to court, as such an accusation could have resulted in a death sentence at the time. The case was turned around on him, with his work being used against him as proof of his homosexual behavior. He was released in 1897 and died three years later on November 30^th, 1900.