AVERY BRUNKUS
Tug Rice, left, and Christian Frost co-star in “The Importance of Being Earnest” at The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey in Madison.
The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey’s 2025 season, which is currently beginning with “The Importance of Being Earnest,” could be seen as a season of ultimates. After all, “Romeo and Juliet” (Sept. 10-Oct. 5) is humanity’s most enduring love story; and “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein” (Oct. 22-Nov. 16) is its greatest horror story. And I’d argue that “It’s a Wonderful Life” (being presented as a radio play, Dec. 3-28) is the greatest holiday-season feel-good story of them all.
As far as “The Importance of Being Earnest” … it would be silly to declare something the funniest play ever. There are so many different kinds of comedy. But in the “witty repartee” department, Oscar Wilde’s 1985 work is unmatched, with an almost endless supply of lines — one often coming quickly after the last one — that will have you marveling at their cleverness.
Algernon: The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility!
Jack: That wouldn’t be at all a bad thing.
Algernon: Literary criticism is not your forte, my dear fellow. Don’t try it. You should leave that to people who haven’t been at a university. They do it so well in the daily papers.
The success of a production of “The Importance of Being Earnest” depends mainly the actors’ ability to makes these lines sound not like cunningly crafted witticisms, but as lines naturally delivered by characters who just happen to speak in bon mots. Director Brian B. Crowe (who is also STNJ’s artistic director) has found just the right thespians, starting with Christian Frost as the playfully caddish Algernon Moncrieff, who has many of the play’s best lines (e.g., “Relations are simply a tedious pack of people who haven’t got the remotest knowledge of how to live, nor the smallest instinct about when to die.”), and Marion Adler as his stern aunt Lady Augusta Bracknell, who dispenses her pronouncements with withering disdain (e.g., “To lose one parent … may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.”).
AVERY BRUNKUS
Carolyne Leys, left, and Joyce Meimei Zheng in “The Importance of Being Earnest.”
Rounding out the very talented cast are Tug Rice as Algernon’s friend and sometimes-enemy Jack Worthing; Joyce Meimei Zheng as Cecily Cardew, who is Jack’s ward and Algernon’s love interest; Carolyne Leys as Gwendolen Fairfax, who is Lady Bracknell’s daughter, Algernon’s cousin, and Jack’s love interest; Celia Schaefer as Miss Prism, who is Cecily’s governess; Alvin Keith as Rev. Chasuble, who is Miss Prism’s love interest; and Richard Bourg, playing both Lane (long-suffering servant to Algernon, though he does have some sharp comebacks of his own) and Merriman (long-suffering, less assertive servant to Jack).
Naturally, there are many impediments to the unions of Algernon and Cecily, and Jack and Gwendolen — complicated by the fact that Jack has created an alter ego, Ernest, that he uses for certain social purposes, and that Algernon has done something similar with a fictional friend, Bunbury.
“What you really are is a Bunburyist,” says Algernon when he finds out about Jack’s elaborate double identity. “You are one of the most advanced Bunburyists I know.”
There is, of course, much Bunburying in “The Importance of Being Earnest,” as well as other casual mischief, jovial banter and misunderstandings of all kinds — also, a goofy food fight, and the discovery of a shocking secret from the past — on the way to everything being tidily resolved.
The set design, by Sarah Beth Hall, appropriately oozes wealth and privilege, with three separate sets. The action starts in Algernon’s London apartment and then moves to Jack’s country home, where Act II takes place in the flower-filled garden, and Act III in the drawing room. There is a full intermission between Acts I and II, but just a brief pause between Acts II and III.
AVERY BRUNKUS
Marion Adler in “The Importance of Being Earnest.”
The costume design, by Austin Blake Conlee, is also suitably posh, with the standout item being a positively jaw-dropping bird hat (see photo included here) worn by Lady Bracknell. I have to admit, as I watched the play, there were times where I found myself staring at it, in wonder.
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Next up in the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey’s season is “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) [revised] [again],” a parody that touches on, yes, all of the plays in The Bard’s catalog, in one whirlwind package.
Does it fit into the “ultimate” theme? Kind of. It’s the ultimate, let’s say, in irreverence. Or maybe audacity.
This is the 2022 version of the play. The original debuted in 1987 and has been revised before, in order to add topical relevance. It will be presented in Madison from July 9 to July 27.
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The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey will present “The Importance of Being Earnest” at its F.M. Kirby Shakespeare Theatre at Drew University in Madison through June 1. Visit shakespearenj.org.
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