Sunday May 17, 2009
Earnest renewal
Review by VERNON ADRIAN EMUANG
A subversive staging of a century-old play imbues it with wonderful freshness.
IT is no joke that Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest is considered one of the funniest plays to have been written in the English language.
“A trivial comedy for serious people” by one of the most intriguing minds in the theatre world, gave us an effervescent script with epigrammatic dialogue and witty repartee that still entertains even though it was written more than a century ago (the play premiered successfully in London in 1895).
The laddies of W!ld Rice’s The Importance of Being Earnest having a fine time negotiating the fine line between humour and over-thetop camp. – Photo courtesy of W!ld Rice Why, it can even hold its own against the most contemporary television sit-coms of the day (laugh-track not withstanding).
While The Importance of Being Earnest was to become Wilde’s strongest, most recognisable work, its premiere prefigured by just weeks the iconic writer’s fall from public grace when his sexual orientation became more important than his contribution to entertainment, literature, and social philosophy.
One could also say that Wilde’s life can hold its own against some of the biggest celebrity scandals in the last few decades – but perhaps we should leave that to Channel E! to recount in a surely unmissable TV event.
Singapore theatre company, W!ld Rice, staged The Importance of Being Earnest last month with two Malaysian theatre veterans, actor-directors Datuk Zahim Albakri and Gavin Yap in the cast – in an all-male ensemble, in fact! How much more Wilde-r could it get?
The Importance of Being Earnest is a hilarious send-up of the social mores of Victorian England, when family name, decorum and what others thought of you were viewed with great “importance”.
Nothing much since then has changed, has it?
Against this backdrop of superficial beauty, refinement and style, two buddies, Algernon Moncrief (Brendon Fernandez) and John Worthing (Daniel York), earnestly pursue the hand of two ladies – or for this mono-gender staging shall we say, laddies – Gwendolen (Chua Enlai) and Cecily (Gavin Yap).
Throw into this upper-crust mix the potential mother-in-law from Hell, Lady Bracknell – a highly-anticipated casting of the inimitable Ivan Heng – and director Glen Goei had a potent secret recipe for Wilde fun of the most side-splitting kind.
On the night I attended, the audience walked into Singapore’s Drama Centre Theatre @ National Library Building to a refreshing live performance by the acclaimed T’ang Quartet, a string ensemble version of Il Divo (well, sort of).
Their deft handling of Bach, Haydn and Mozart set the mood for a chamber performance that delivered theatrical musicality with impeccable comic timing.
As the Baroque-inspired musical prologue came to an end, a stylised monochromatic set was revealed and the characters breezed in one after the other in a kaleidoscope of accents, affectations and posturings that not so much tried to mimic those of Wilde’s London, but of a social class that took its outward presentation perhaps a little too seriously.
The minimalist approach to set design (by Heng) and lighting (the multi-award-winning Mac Chan) allowed the actors to shine without distraction from the delicious delivery and taut technique.
Wilde’s dialogue is a challenge to any actor because of the comic irony and self-parody, and a wrongly placed pause or breath can undo his mischievous intentions.
Here, Goei’s cast were impressive, and at times provocative, like Yap’s Little Cecily who walked the tight-rope between innocence and schizophrenia.
Or Heng’s uber-camp matriarch who’s sharpness in characterisation brought on the chuckles even with a mere look.
With men in suits (beautifully designed by fashion doyen Frederick Lee) depicting even the female characters, Goei’s masterful monosexual staging allowed the hypocrisy and duplicity of human behaviour in a privileged class to come searingly to the fore.
Here was a presentation that was both endearing and exquisite, even in its, shall we say, elaborately planned irony – very much in character of the many Wilde quotations that writers the world over are wont to insert when naughty witticism requires wanton display.
Including both stage and silver screen, this W!ld Rice offering would have been this reviewer’s sixth encounter with Earnest, yet Goei’s strategies imbued a freshness and spontaneity that was highly enjoyable.
The only big question that buzzed annoyingly about in this reviewer’s mind at first was: why have the “female” characters portrayed in male attire, yet have them deliver their lines in high camp?
And then it dawned that Goei was striving to achieve an inverted (perhaps even subversive) normalising of gender behaviour.
The more you watched, the more you laughed, and the less it mattered how strange things seemed at first.
A lesson in the inclusive power of humour, no doubt, whether you entered the theatre in a Brokeback or Priscilla state of mind.
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