CHAPEL HILL -- CHAPEL HILL -- After 115 years, Oscar Wilde's sparkling social comedy, "The Importance of Being Earnest," remains evergreen. PlayMakers Repertory Company ends a strong season with a visually stunning production, offering an energetic cast that delivers the goods, several reservations aside.
Reviews rarely start with the sets, but Marion Williams' elegant Victorian designs, the most impressive seen at PlayMakers in years, deserve equal billing with the players. Satisfying symmetry, dense detail and controlled colors blend with breathtaking effect. A townhouse living room and a manor house's garden and morning room are awash with furniture, teacarts and bric-a-brac, capped upstage with a two-story carousel of doors, windows and bookcases, complete with parlor piano and spiral staircase, which changes perspective for each scene.
Of course, no amount of technical wizardry (including Anne Kennedy's strikingly handsome period costuming) can offset the need for the special style Wilde's plays demand. Witticisms can't be just punch lines, the dialogue requiring extreme precision and timing for maximum effect. Delivery must have flair and flow, guarding against archness while delighting in artifice.
Visiting artists Julia Coffey and Jeremy Webb demonstrate the style perfectly as Gwendolyn and her suitor Jack (aka Earnest), shaping lines with a range of expression that mines all the humor yet allows for believable character. PlayMakers regulars Marianne Miller and John Brummer make Cecily and her suitor Algernon charmingly down to earth, but their narrower-ranged, more natural delivery deflates some of the buoyancy. Still, the four work well together, especially Coffey and Miller, who make their second act jealous fight the show's highlight.
Casting a man as Gwendolyn's battleaxe mother, Lady Bracknell, has become common practice recently. PlayMakers veteran Ray Dooley gets credit for keeping the portrayal firmly away from camp, but it's so restrained that his delivery has little variety of expression, suppressing the role's brilliant nuances. Julie Fishell's Miss Prism is appropriately fussy, although not quite plain enough, her flirting with Dr. Chasuble curtailed Saturday by young understudy Matthew Murphy's game assumption of the role for indisposed Jeffrey Blair Cornell. Jimmy Kieffer nicely contrasts the two butlers.
Director Matthew Arbour elicits a bracing pace from his cast, but on Saturday they were still adjusting to audience response, often obscuring significant lines through the laughter. And while playing three-quarters round is always an auditory challenge, here the constant shifting of position was particularly deleterious to catching all the humor.
Individual contributions and Wilde's clever construction combine for an enjoyable evening, however, a worthy introduction for the unfamiliar and a viable version for the aficionado.
