Mauckingbird's "Importance of Being Earnest'

Oscar Wilde may be the best known pre-Stonewall gay artist, but he's remembered primarily for his epigrams, which he strung together into his longer works, most successfully in his novel, The Portrait of Dorian Gray, and his play, The Importance of Being Earnest — the only two of his works that continue to enjoy a significant popular audience in the 21st Century.

Though these works are superficially quite different, both concern men leading double lives. In Dorian Gray this theme is presented with strong gothic undertones and a title character whose life of dissipation is recorded on the face of a portrait locked safely away in the attic.

With Earnest, the double life motif is played for laughs. Jack Worthing (Chancellor Dean) has created an imaginary brother, Ernest, who both provides him with a reason to go to London (Ernest, it appears, is a bit of a scapegrace) and a persona once he's there; as Ernest, he woos the lovely Gwendolyn.

Two women, one man

Jack's good friend, and Gwendolyn's cousin, Algernon (James Ijames) discovers Jack's deceit and confesses that he, too, leads a double life; Algy has created an imaginary friend named Bunbury, to whose sickbed he hurries whenever he wants to escape his social obligations in London.

In Act II, Jack and Algy both find themselves at Jack's estate: Jack to announce Ernest's death, so he can free himself of the complications of maintaining the deception, and Algy to pretend to be Ernest, in order to meet Jack's wealthy ward Cecily, who is known to be fascinated with that wicked brother. Gwendolyn arrives as well, so the two young women meet and are prepared to be friends, until they realize they're both engaged to "Ernest." Straightening out the confusion consumes the rest of the play.

Gender-blind casting

On the surface, Earnest is a satire of late Victorian marriage. But a more serious issue, especially for a gay author— how to live the life one wants within the strictures of a highly conventional society— lurks just below that surface.

This conflict would seem to make Earnest a juicy project for Mauckingbird Theatre Company, the only American professional company doing gay-themed theater exclusively. (Mauckingbird's previous productions have included all-male productions of Molière's The Misanthrope, Shakespeare's R & J and a lesbian adaptation of Hedda Gabler.)

Mauckingbird approaches Earnest by casting male actors as both Gwendolyn and Cecily (Brent Knobloch and David Hutchison), and using women to play the secondary pair of lovers, Cecily's governess Miss Prism and the local curate, Dr. Chasuble (Sarah Doherty and Lindsay Mauck). Other than realigning pronouns ("hims" become "hers" and vice versa), the changes to the text are minimal— most obviously, the names "Gwendolyn" and "Cecily" are left intact.

Wilde's ordeal

"This play is all about class and status," Mauckingbird's founder and artistic director, Peter Reynolds, contends. "What works in this version is that it doesn't matter to Lady Bracknell [Gwendolyn's mother] if her son wants to marry a man or marry a woman, as long as their class and status meet her standards."

In this summer of the Supreme Court's ruling on marriage equality, gender-blindness is a timely sentiment— but it hardly reflects the social and legal experience of homosexuals in Wilde's time.

Even while the first run of Earnest was delighting London audiences in 1895, Wilde's conflict with his lover's father led to a trial at which he was convicted of "gross indecency" and sentenced to two years at hard labor— an experience from which he never really recovered. This is a grim background, indeed, for such a frothy piece: but surely a gay (or even a "post-gay," as the company labels it) interpretation could provide a more nuanced exploration of the themes of doubleness and secrecy.

Lavender clichés

If, on the other hand, Mauckingbird's point is to provide a 2013 "no big deal" look at same-sex marriage— well, less reliance on outdated stereotypes would have been welcome. From Algy's lavender suit to Cecily's simper, no cliché remained unembodied in this production.

It's a shame, really. Mauckingbird's cast was quite competent; the set was cleverly rendered to make the most of the tiny space available; the pacing and staging were professional. Given the superficiality of the approach, though, this Earnest must be chalked up as a missed opportunity.