Review: THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST Zips Along at Pittsburgh Public Theater

If there's a routine way Oscar Wilde's comedies, particularly The Importance of Being Earnest, are presented, it's with a sense of lazy, self-satisfied indulgence: slow, languid, basking in their own wit. Sometimes there's a certain pleasure in this, but it can be much of a muchness. Thankfully, Jenny Koons's lightly reconfigured and edited production shifts the play's subgenre from "aesthetic indulgence" to "screwball comedy:" the farcial elements are emphasized, and the jokes (of which there are many) zip by with the machine-gun speed of a Hepburn/Tracy film.

The plot, for the few who have never read or seen Earnest, concerns the friendship between two Edwardian playboys, the relatively upright Jack (Paul "Paulie" Deo, Jr) and the hedonistic Algernon (Dylan Marquis Meyers). Jack has invented an unlucky brother, Ernest, as a pretense to taking trips away from his country home and his young ward Cecily (Alex Manalo). Algernon, upon learning of this deception, decides to visit Cecily under the name of Ernest. Are you following? Let me throw one more complication in: Jack's friendship with Algernon, and his betrothal to Algernon's relative Gwendolen (Veronica Del Cerro) has been in the identity of Ernest. Mix in a lovesick and absent-minded governess (Susan M. Lynskey) and an imposing drill sergeant of a dowager (David Ryan Smith, as the legendary Lady Bracknell), and you've got the recipe for a door-slamming, entry-and-exit farce made in heaven.

Director/adapter Jenny Koons has trimmed down the play's text and interpolated bits of found text from Victorian and Edwardian etiquette guides, read by the cast during stylized vignettes between scenes. Some of these are rather straightforward and can almost feel like filler, but others, particularly one that unexpectedly references Pittsburghese, are amusing, with the proper mix of reverence and irreverence that Wilde relies upon. The cast, one of the funniest Pittsburgh has seen in ages, is uniformly up to the task of this lightning-speed farcical material. Dylan Marquis Meyers is a living cartoon, mugging, posing and performing bits of physical comedy between his many, many quips and witticisms. His ability to strike a pose upon entrance is a guaranteed laugh every time. Paul "Paulie" Deo, Jr makes a perfect straight man to the ridiculousness of many other characters, but that doesn't mean he can't get laughs of his own. The muffin scene (if you know, you know), is a particular standout for the chemistry between Deo and Meyers. 

Alex Manalo and Veronica De Cerro have a similar straight man/clown dynamic to Deo and Meyers; Manalo's Cecily is as pure and classic an ingenue as one could as, while De Cerro's Gwendolen is high camp in the best way. When the two of them are pitted head to head in a frenemy showdown, it's tense and hilariously funny; when the two of them truly team up as allies against the men who deceived them, the comic chemistry nearly doubles. Then again, there's one character who is no one's friend and everyone's enemy: the hyper-opinionated head bitch in charge, Lady Bracknell. Played by David Ryan Smith as a terrifying and imposing hybrid of RuPaul and Laurence Fishburne, Bracknell is as physically imposing as socially. Half ice queen and half drill sergeant, Smith stalks the stage like an apex predator, stomping on dreams and issuing pithy put-downs with aplomb. Smith's impressive physical size, amplified further by a large Victorian dress, is also part of the play's best sight gag, in which a kiss on the cheek is repeatedly impeded, forcing Bracknell to lean lower, and lower, and lower (while growing more and more annoyed).

Jason Ardizzone-West has designed a simple but effective set, full of nooks and crannies for props or even characters to pop out during the frenzied final scenes. Combined with Hugh Hanson's costumes and Annmarie Duggan's lighting, the overall design conjures the perfect spring garden-party atmosphere. It's amazing how a play that seemingly has very little to say about anything, a play that is about frivoloty and designed to be frivolous, still feels fresh over a century later. The Importance of Being Earnest is a prototypical romantic comedy, farce and screwball comedy, all genres that have not yet (and likely never will) go entirely out of fashion. 

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