Word: earnest
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Importance of Being Earnest has class, and so does the current Agassiz production. Partly this is because of the uniformly creditable cast; mostly it is because of the play itself. Whatever the reason, Earnest is well worth sticking around Cambridge an extra evening...
...seem particularly courageous to produce a play so hard to ruin, but courage isn't the best measure of good theatre. And it isn't as if Earnest presents no pitfalls to void. The Agassiz production, in fact, sidesteps one of them a little too closely. Wilde's jokes can easily be over-exploited, with the result that you laugh hard at the outset, but tire around the middle when the characters become little more than the jokes they spout. It is rather like watching a star-studded cast and not being able to forget who they...
...Earnest offers many star roles, and nearly all are more than capably filled, though not always be actors particularly well-suited to them...
...work with. He has to strike some sort of balance between the antics of four extremely funny actresses and the overall consistency of the play. It seems to me he has capitulated to the antics, or simply not had enough time to coordinate them. Either way, Earnest comes over in patches. Furthermore, while Agassiz's small stage makes blocking difficult, there is no excuse for having characters stand stiff against the curtains while they are not part...
...dialogue is archly mock-Edwardian; the pace, trampolin-bouncy. The sprung rhythms prove complementary, and the cast handle the outlandish fool ery like seasoned farceurs. The show does have its slack and silly moments, but never when Paul Ford is dead center, deadpan and dead earnest, the dourest living master of comic mayhem...