By Sarah Dailey
At a time when the semester is coming to a close, and teachers are trying to squeeze in everything they have not gotten to yet this semester in the last week, we all need a little laughter right now. The U of L theater’s performance of “The Importance of Being Earnest” is just the thing to get you chuckling in no time.
Though the play is written to be set in 19th century aristocratic England, director James Thompson chose to set it in present time and in Grosse Point, Michigan. The script has been tweaked to take out all the awkward old English phrases and replace them with language we can understand. The choice to rearrange the words was intended to help the audience stay in the moment and not lose sight of the meaning of the play.
The actors are phenomenal. They all play the part as if they were born for it. My favorite character is Algernon Moncrieff, played by Robert Blizard. He charms the audience with his wit, his stature and his constant habit of eating when he is nervous, when he is bored, or when. . . well, he was eating the entire play. All the actors in the play were equally as amusing and charming. As Cecily Cardew, Maggie Schroeder played the imaginative 18 year old who has been dreaming and pretending that she and Uncle Jack’s brother Earnest are engaged, when in fact, she has never spoken to or met the man in her life.
Before I saw the play, I assumed that when they referred to being Earnest, it meant being honest, not the importance of actually being named Earnest. At first, I was thrown off by this fact, until Jack started to explain to Algernon that he is called Earnest because the love of his life, Gwendolyn, will only truly love and marry a man if, and only if, his name is (sigh) Earnest. This seems to be the case for both Gwendolyn and Cecily. Both of them are captivated by the name, and are drawn more to that than the men who have the name. Becuse both are in love with this Earnest, they think that they are marrying the same man, which only adds to the constant humor this play intends to display.
I could go on for many more paragraphs about this play and just how great it is; instead, you should go and see it for yourself. Trust me, you won’t be disappointed. And as I said, we all need a little laughter in our lives right now, so go on and treat yourself to the best that U of L’s theater department has to offer.
