Theatre in Review: The Importance of Being Earnest (Roundabout Theatre Company/American Airlines)

	Sara Topham, David furr, and Brian Bedford. Photo: Joan Marcus

You rarely get universal agreement among the members of the Broadway press, but last week's reviews for the Roundabout revival of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest constituted one big love letter to Brian Bedford for his turn as Lady Bracknell. And for good reason -- this is one of the drollest performances you are likely to see in many a season.

You might imagine that casting a man as Wilde's remorseless social arbiter would be an invitation to camp it up -- but, in this case at least, you would be very, very wrong. As it happens, Bedford, an actor of seemingly infinite high-comedy gifts, is more equipped to play the role than just about any woman I can think of. Outfitted by Desmond Heeley in voluminous folds of satin -- you could hide a small army under that bustle -- topped by bizarre little hats resting precariously on mountains of precisely arranged hair, Bedford is as imposing, and ridiculous, a monument to Victorian propriety as the Albert Memorial. Not for nothing is she compared in the text to the Gorgon, for Bedford's Bracknell is a truly terrifying creature -- her eyes narrowed in suspicion, her face frozen in a permanent scowl, as if something unspeakably vulgar has just taken place and must be ignored at all costs. Even when explicating the severest points of her social doctrine ("An engagement should come on a young girl as a surprise, pleasant or unpleasant, as the case may be") she rarely raises her voice, preferring delicate, flute-like tones until, overcome with outrage, it drops to a basso profundo.

This last point may be the key to Bedford's performance. In the famous interview scene with Jack, who wants to marry the fair young Gwendolyn, most actors playing Lady Bracknell focus on her shocked discovery that Jack, as an infant, was found in a handbag left in a train station. In this, they're following the lead of Edith Evans, who owned the role for a good part of the 20th century. Evans' reading of the line ("A handbag?") ran up the vocal scale, culminating in a horrified squeak. Bedford avoids comparisons by focusing on a slightly earlier line, when Jack, embarrassed, admits that he knows nothing of his background. (I was...well, I was found.") Here, Lady Bracknell's single-word response ("Found?") is an explosion of bewilderment and fury from the depths of Bedford's vocal register; it is so unexpected -- and so perfect -- that it gives an entirely fresh slant to dialogue that you fear you're heard too many times before.

Of course, Lady Bracknell is possibly the smallest signature role in the canon of great plays, so even her finest interpreter can't carry the evening. Fortunately, Brian Bedford, the star, gets crucial assistance from Brian Bedford, the director, who has assembled a company that proves unusually nimble at navigating the convolutions of Wilde's farce. The director's eye for casting extends to even the smaller roles: Dana Ivey's Miss Prism is a vessel of Victorian repressions that melt into bizarrely girlish behavior, her hands floating like a brace of butterflies when faced with the cleric she covets. Her face-off with Lady Bracknell, when Prism is forced to own up to the one great error in her otherwise stainless career, is one of the production's high points. As Canon Chasuble, the object of Miss Prism's slightly grotesque affections, Paxton Whitehead employs his imposing presence and hushed, funeral-director speaking voice to solid comic effect.

Then again, most of Earnest is in the hands of the younger characters, and, once again, Bedford has chosen well. Santino Fontana shows impressive range -- from Brighton Beach Memoirs to this is no small stretch -- as Algernon, the very model of an irresponsible, impecunious Victorian male; he makes the most of the passages in which Algernon explains the practice of "bunburying," which involves roaming the British countryside under an assumed identity. He contrasts beautifully with David Furr's Jack, who vainly tries to remain the voice of reason under even the most ridiculous of circumstances, yet who, when thwarted, begins to sound dangerously like a child in need of spanking. (Here again, Heely's costumes prove helpful. Algernon's collegiate stripes and broad color palette are clues to his character, while Jack's sleek black suit coats reveal his pretensions to maturity.)

As Gwendolyn and Cecily, the play's principal love objects, Sara Topham and Charlotte Parry are perhaps not quite as distinctive. However, both of them are tuned into their characters' perverse logic, and they deliver each of Wilde's lines with the cut-glass precision that makes them so amusing.

Heely's sets are even better than his costumes. In their gorgeously painted detail and clever use of forced perspective, they are a charming throwback to such great designers of the last century as Cecil Beaton and Oliver Messel. I was particularly taken with the Act II garden, seen here as a maze of flower-covered trellises, and the Act III drawing room, rendered in the most delicate sea green, with a clear view of the house's solarium located upstage. Duane Schuler's lighting bathes the action in English sunshine, thus adding to the buoyancy of the action. Drew Levy's sound design provides solid reinforcement for the palm court melodies that bridge each scene; he also comes up with an amusing sequence of effects for the climax, when Jack is upstairs, tearing his room apart in search of the evidence that will finally explain his birth.

The Importance of Being Earnest is on almost everyone's list of overexposed works -- a hard fate for a play that aims to delight with its irreverent attitude. It's not too much to say that everyone involved in this enterprise is skilled at re-examining each line of Wilde's play until it feels thoroughly scrubbed of the past. For that, you can thank Brian Bedford. He hasn't just reinvented Lady Bracknell; he's made Oscar Wilde seem young and impudent again.--David Barbour