Over the past 25 or so years, Oscar Wilde’s comedy “The Importance of Being Earnest” has been professionally staged in San Diego four or five times. But it hasn’t always been staged right.
If the actors rush through Wilde’s brilliant writing or push too hard on the comic lines, it can come off as shrill, dated and dull. The best productions allow Wilde’s words to breathe and sparkle on their own. Fortunately for San Diego audiences, director Kerry Meads has built a sparkler at Lamb’s Players Theatre in Coronado, where the 1895 play opened Saturday in a lush and well-cast production.
Meads has fielded a cast of top-notch San Diego actors, who play out the class satire on an elegant multilocale set designed by Sean Fanning and lavish period costumes designed by Jeanne Reith.
The comic play, which runs just over two hours with intermission, is about English bachelor friends Algernon and Jack, who take turns playing the imaginary man “Earnest” to court their intended brides, presuming correctly that the name Earnest implies a sincerity that both men lack. The play skewers the social mores and pomposity of Victorian England’s upper crust.
Co-starring in the lead roles are Michael Louis Cusimano as the spoiled and wealthy playboy Algernon, and Brian Mackey as Jack, an orphaned country estate owner who has fallen in love with Gwendolyn, a young woman above his station in life.
Earlier this year, Cusimano played a roguish bad boy in Cygnet Theatre’s “Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812.” His charismatic Algernon is another troublemaker, but this time more impish and cheeky in nature. Mackey’s endearing and wide-eyed Jack has a boyish determination to marry Gwendolyn, who is played with witty sophistication by Rachael VanWormer. Lauren King Thompson is especially funny in her playful and dreamy performance as Cecily, Jack’s ward, who Algernon falls for in the play’s second act.
Actor David McBean steals all his scenes as the snobbish widowed aristocrat Lady Bracknell, a role frequently played by men. In smaller but well-performed roles are Deborah Gilmour Smyth as Cecily’s elderly love-starved governess Miss Prism; Brian Salmon as the country vicar Chasuble; and Geno Carr and John Rosen as the seen-it-all butlers Merriman and Lane, respectively.
The production features lighting by Nathan Peirson, sound by Ben Read and Patrick Duffy and excellent dialect coaching by Vanessa Dinning.
Next year, “The Importance of Being Earnest” will turn 130 years old, but when it’s done right — as it is at Lamb’s this fall — it’s timeless.
‘The Importance of Being Earnest’
When: 7 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays; 2 and 7 p.m. Wednesdays and Saturdays; 2 p.m. Sundays. Through Nov. 10
Where: Lamb’s Players Theatre, 1142 Orange Ave., Coronado
Tickets: $38-$82
Phone: (619) 437-6000
Online: lambsplayers.org
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