‘Being Earnest’ Comes Back to Brim With Bliss

Written in three weeks in 1894 because he needed the money, Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest� triumphed a year later in its London debut. It has since paid back endless dividends. It never stays out of sight for long. In fact, its popularity threatens to become what one of Wilde’s characters says about cleverness: “An absolute public nuisance.�

Yet Wilde’s play of double lives and double meanings, a truly great and mad comedy, hasn’t been done by the Pasadena Playhouse since 1930. If the new production, staged by Playhouse artistic director Sheldon Epps, finally disappoints, it nonetheless has its felicity.

Chiefly there’s a beguiling Gwendolen Fairfax portrayed by Kaitlin Hopkins, funny and haughty and free of the common American strenuousness when it comes to Wilde. Right behind her is Robert Curtis Brown as John Worthing, her intended. When these two steal a few moments together in Act 1--the “Charming day, Miss Fairfax� scene--it’s immediately clear Hopkins and Brown are this production’s aces, in tune with each other and with the incomparable material.

Not to say that the unofficial headliners of this production are lousy. But Shirley Knight’s Lady Bracknell is all surface outrage and shock; this fine actress, pitch-perfect on Broadway in Horton Foote’s “Young Man From Atlanta,� hasn’t yet found the witty imperiousness any Bracknell requires. And Patrick Dempsey’s Algernon Moncrieff is all hair and no vocal variety. He’s not giving one of those dreaded hambone performances; he’s likable enough. He just hasn’t made enough specific decisions about how to play this guy, or this style.

All of which proves that Wilde is no stylistic stroll down the lane. The best production I’ve ever seen of Wilde was Sir Peter Hall’s “An Ideal Husband.� In Wilde, the epigrams and paradoxes need to be put across, but they don’t fare well if oversold, or delivered with the verbal equivalent of italics. Hall’s “Ideal Husband� proved Wilde can be vibrantly out-sized yet utterly unforced.

The Playhouse’s “Earnest� gets better as it goes. To his credit, director Epps doesn’t allow much in the way of shtick to interfere with all that exquisite verbal slapstick. (A recent Guthrie Theater production of “Earnest� featured “Charley’s Aunt� sight gags and a Gilbert & Sullivan dance break.) Visually it improves as well: Scenic designer John Iacovelli’s first-act Piccadilly flat, an overstuffed Victorian affair, transforms into a more attractive country manor house, framed (as is Act 1) by two false proscenium arches done up in the leafy William Morris style.

The plot hinges on a name. John is “Ernest� in town, and “Jack� in the country; Gwendolen loves the man she believes to be Ernest for his name. John’s ward, Cecily (Lina Patel), likewise has been cruelly misled when it comes to Algy, who’s posing as Jack’s brother, also named Ernest. That’s life, Wilde says, in this deceptive “age of surfaces.�

Epps’ cast is quite good in the middle ranks. Patel delivers a kind of stealth performance as Cecily; she’s not particularly witty, but her work is clean and smart, and it pays off by play’s end. Carolyn Seymour’s restrained Miss Prism pairs off nicely with David Purdham’s Rev. Chasuble. The latter wages surprisingly funny war with a bee in his first scene. Why that bit works, and why Morgan Rusler’s eye-twitching business as Merriman the manservant does not, is just one of those comic mysteries.

You can point to certain technical abilities brought to this cast by Brown and Hopkins. Brown played Algy back in the mid-1980s at the Guthrie, and though promising, his work was pretty florid. Here, as Jack, it’s very shrewdly considered; you never quite know how he’s going to deal rhythmically with a given line. (With Dempsey, you tend to know.) Hopkins has the confidence and technique to hold back. She’s amusing even in repose: Those flickers of confusion and delight register subtly, but they register.

Director Epps saves his most effective flourish for last. Unexpectedly we get a dash of pathos at the coda: As the three onstage couples pair off, Lady Bracknell is left alone (she’s married, but how happily?). Then the man who really is Ernest, as well as earnest, kisses her hand, prompting the “signs of triviality� line. It’s a glancing but lovely moment. Epps can’t corral all his players into the same rarefied sphere for much of this production. But that final touch makes up for a lot of uncertainty and strain earlier on.

* “The Importance of Being Earnest,� 39 S. El Molino Ave., Pasadena. Tuesdays-Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 5 and 9 p.m.; Sundays, 2 and 7 p.m. Ends June 20. $13.50-$42.50. (800) 233-3123. Running time: 2 hours, 35 minutes.

Robert Curtis Brown: John Worthing

Patrick Dempsey: Algernon Moncrieff

David Purdham: Rev. Canon Chasuble

Morgan Rusler: Merriman/Lane

Shirley Knight: Lady Bracknell

Kaitlin Hopkins: Gwendolen Fairfax

Lina Patel: Cecily Cardew

Carolyn Seymour: Miss Prism

Written by Oscar Wilde. Directed by Sheldon Epps. Set by John Iacovelli. Costumes by Dana Rebecca Woods. Lighting by Victor En Yu Tan. Sound by Frederick W. Boot. Production stage manager Jill Johnson Gold.