{"id":6918,"date":"2017-11-30T07:33:24","date_gmt":"2017-11-30T12:33:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6918"},"modified":"2017-12-04T08:03:24","modified_gmt":"2017-12-04T13:03:24","slug":"the-importance-of-being-earnest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6918","title":{"rendered":"The Importance of Being Earnest"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.tworivertheater.org\/plays_events\/current_season.php?categoryID=255&amp;spektrix_bounce=true\">Two River Theater<\/a> in Red Bank, New Jersey, is putting on a silky-smooth version of Oscar Wilde\u2019s classic satire, now through December 3. Although the witty dialog keeps coming and coming, you dare not do more than chuckle or you\u2019ll miss the next line. The show\u2019s directed by Michael Cumpsty, whom Princetonians may remember as Henry Higgins in McCarter Theatre\u2019s excellent <em>My Fair Lady<\/em> a few years back.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6919\" style=\"width: 279px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6919\" class=\" wp-image-6919\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/Importance-of-Being-Earnest-e1512044999663.jpg?resize=269%2C399\" alt=\"Importance of Being Earnest\" width=\"269\" height=\"399\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6919\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sam Lilja &amp; Liesel Allen Yeager, photo by T. Charles Erickson<\/p><\/div>\n<p>And here are a few of those timeless lines:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>The truth is rarely pure and never simple.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em><em>I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.<\/em><\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does, and that is his.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Artistic Director John Dias\u2019s program notes say this about Wilde\u2019s brilliant dialog: \u201cWe feel both horror and delight when witnessing this expert employment of language\u2014its flexibility and the kind of doubleness of meaning that both masks truth and somehow reveals it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>If you haven\u2019t seen this play recently\u2014or if by some mishap you\u2019ve never seen it\u2014this is a sparkling version. The two leads, friends Algernon Moncrieff (played by Sam Lilja) and Jack Worthing (Federico Rodriguez) are especially strong, and Liesel Allen Yeager\u2019s Cecily Cardew is a delightful flirt.<\/p>\n<p>The men fall in love, and though the women are willing, circumstances are not. How they sort out the absurdity of \u00a0Jack\u2019s dubious origins\u2014as a baby, he was found in a handbag in Victoria Station (\u201cThe <em>line<\/em> is immaterial!\u201d)\u2014and the women\u2019s outr\u00e9 determination to marry men named Earnest . . . well you\u2019ll have to experience those pleasures for yourself.<\/p>\n<p>Excellent scenery from Charlie Corcoran and costumes from Jess Goldstein.<\/p>\n<p>In a before-the-show talk, cast member Henry Vick (perfect as Algie\u2019s super-discreet butler) reminds audience members that only a few months after this play opened in London to great acclaim in 1895, Wilde was convicted of gross indecency with men and sentenced to two years\u2019 hard labor. He never wrote another play.<\/p>\n<p>Today, 117 years since Wilde&#8217;s death in Paris, a penniless man, we can reflect on how Victorian society, which he skewered so lightheartedly in <em>Earnest,<\/em> would seem to have had the last word, yet the fact that audiences still delight in his work and flock to see it\u00a0 suggests a different outcome.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Two River Theater in Red Bank, New Jersey, is putting on a silky-smooth version of Oscar Wilde\u2019s classic satire, now through December 3. Although the witty dialog keeps coming and coming, you dare not do more than chuckle or you\u2019ll &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6918\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"The Importance of Being Earnest - delightful production of the Oscar Wilde classic at Red Bank, NJ's Two River Theater","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[272,359,104,147],"tags":[1069,698],"class_list":["post-6918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comedy","category-review","category-the-morgue","category-theater","tag-oscar-wilde","tag-two-river-theater"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1NA","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6918"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6918\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6922,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6918\/revisions\/6922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}