Inspired direction, pitch-perfect performances, and a gorgeous production design combine to make Antaeus Theatre Company’s 2024 season opener about as perfect a The Importance Of Being Earnest as any Oscar Wilde lover could wish for.

The plot and characters are the same ones that have been delighting audiences since Earnest made its stage debut on February 14, 1895 at London’s St James’s Theatre.

There’s lovely young Londoner Gwendolen Fairfax (Jules Willcox), whose “ideal has always been to love someone of the name Earnest,” so much so that her beau Earnest Worthing (Alex Barlas) dare not let it slip that the name Earnest is one he himself has given his London persona, his actual first name Jack being reserved for the life he leads in the Hertfordshire countryside.

 Though Gwendolen’s mother Lady Augusta Bracknell (Anne Gee Byrd) approves of the young man’s occupation (smoking) and his fortune (considerable), she nixes any thought of matrimony upon learning that her niece’s suitor started life as a foundling, abandoned in a handbag in Victoria Station and raised without the slightest knowledge of his parentage.

And “Earnest” is not the only young gentleman leading une double vie in Wilde’s classic romcom of manners.

 Just as Jack has concocted a “wicked brother” whose frequent jams offer his straighter-laced sibling an excuse to visit London, his best chum (and Gwendolen’s cousin) Algernon Moncrieff (Jay Lee) has fabricated an invalid friend named “Bunbury,” to whose aid he must rush whenever he feels the urge to escape from yet another tiresome evening with boring relations.

 When talk of Jack’s nubile young ward Cecily Cardew (Alessandra Mañón) piques Algernon’s curiosity, he heads countryward to meet the fair maiden, posing as the ne’er-do-well “Earnest” only to discover that like Gwendolen, Cecily has set her eyes on marrying a man by that name and no other.

 Enter country rector Reverend Chasuble (Bo Foxworth), more than happy to christen both young gentlemen Earnest so long as it doesn’t keep him away too long from Cecily’s frazzled governess Miss Laetitia Prism (Julia Fletcher), with whom he is smitten.

As Shakespeare put it (though not nearly as wittily as Wilde surely would have), “The course of true love never did run smooth.”

Earnest’s tasty Wildisms (“To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.” “No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.”) are every bit as outrageously fresh and funny as they were 129 years ago, but director Gigi Bermingham and her star-studded Antaeus cast dig much deeper into the script than is normally the case, resulting in a production even those who’ve seen umpteen Earnests won’t want to miss.

 Eschewing the recent trend to cast a male Lady Bracknell in female drag, Bermingham signals from the get-go that this Importance Of Being Earnest will be rooted in reality, and even when physical comedy is cleverly integrated into the proceedings (e.g. Jack becoming barely intelligible after stuffing his mouth with biscuits), it never descends into sitcom slapstick.

 The palpable passion ignited between Jack and Gwendolyn adds to the production’s authenticity (no wonder intimacy director Jen Albert was brought on board) as Bermingham and company create real, believable characters, none of whom ever descends into caricature.

Lee’s scintillating Algernon, Barlas’s passionate Jack, Willcox’s sultry Gwendolyn, and Mañón’s zesty Cecily are all four pure perfection, and Byrd is a steely stunner as Lady Bracknell, with Fletcher’s oddball Miss Prism, Foxworth’s folksy Rev. Chasuble, and Yapujian’s pair of obsequious butlers completing the dreamiest of dream casts.

And speaking of dream teams, the design contributions of Angela Balogh Calin (sets), Ken Booth (lighting), Julie Keen (costumes), and John McElveney (props) add up to an absolutely sumptuous production design, one completed by Salvador C Zamora’s jaunty sound design.

Paul Wagar is dialect coach. Rachel Berney Needleman is production dramaturg. Talya Camras is production stage manager and Casey Collaso is assistant stage manager.

 Even after seeing eight different productions of The Importance Of Being Earnest, I have yet to tire of this Oscar Wilde masterwork. At the risk of going overboard, its latest incarnation at Antaeus just might be the absolute best of the bunch.

Kiki & David Gindler Performing Arts Center, 110 East Broadway, Glendale. Through November 18. See website for detailed schedule.
www.antaeus.org

–Steven Stanley
October 18, 2024
Photos: Jeff Lorch

Tags: Los Angeles Theater Review, Oscar Wilde, The Antaeus Company