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<b>by Oscar Wilde. Directed by Ben Barnes
Soulpepper Theatre Company, Young Centre, Toronto
June 8-September 5, 2006
</b>
Irish director Ben Barnes’s production for Soulpepper of Oscar Wilde’s most popular play is remarkably fresh. Rather than presenting the play’s characters merely as mouthpieces for Wilde’s witty epigrams, Barnes has looked beneath the artifice to give the four lovers very distinct personalities and make Wilde’s inexhaustible wit seem to flow naturally from their conversation and points of view.
As Algernon, Damien Atkins is the quintessential Wildean character, a man for whom wit and style supersede all other considerations in life. His friend Jack played by Kevin Bundy is just the opposite--clueless, anxious and, in fact, “earnest.” Normally the two men are played as if interchangeable, but Barnes’s approach provides delightful tension and contrast and the text supports it. As Gwendolen, Patricia Fagen clearly shows how this calculating city girl will in a short time become just like her dragonish mother. Barnes contrasts her brittleness with Samantha Espie’s charming Cecily, who, for once, looks and acts as if she were born and bred in the country as she’s supposed to be. Nancy Palk is a marvellous Lady Bracknell, maliciously smiling at others’ discomfort, while Brenda Robins and Oliver Dennis are deliciously funny as the batty Miss Prism and the self-important Reverend Chasuble. If the setting updated to the 1920s makes little sense, at least, for a change, Wilde’s characters do.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in <i>Eye Weekly</i> 2006-06-15.
Photo: Nancy Palk and Ben Carlson. ©Lydia Pawalek.
<b>2006-06-15</b>
<b>The Importance of Being Earnest</b>