Wikipedia knows, “This farcical comedy depicts the tangled affairs of two young men about town who lead double lives to evade unwanted social obligations, both assuming the name Ernest while wooing the two young women of their affections.”
I first encountered Oscar Wilde as a schoolboy when we saw Lady Windermere's Fan at the Hamburg Kammerspiele. It was my first visit to the theater to see a socially critical comedy.
My second contact with Oscar Wilde was through my mother-in-law, who raved about The Picture of Dorian Gray. She read the novel as a young girl, and she teasingly alluded to Oscar Wilde's homoerotic tendencies.
The Freiburg performance could not resist this allusion either. After all, all the scenes in the play took place in a men's restroom, which in retrospect need not even be seen as an alienating gag.
And, of course, it is an allusion to Wilde's homosexuality when one of the protagonists, Algernon Moncrieff, comes covetously close to his friend John Worthing and strokes his cheeks.
Lady Bracknell, who does not want to marry off her daughter Gwendolen Fairfax to the foundling John Worthing, is played so wonderfully by a man. Shortly after her first appearance, she naturally empties her bladder in a urinal.
The governess Miss Prism watching over Worthing's ward, Cecily Cardew, is also played by a man and occasionally gets a slap on the butt from the gay Reverend Canon Chasuble.
Oscar Wilde called his last comedy A trivial comedy for serious people. Although there is a happy ending for the comedy's bisexual protagonists, Wilde was accused of homosexual acts shortly after the premiere in 1895. In the course of a public trial, he was sentenced to two years in prison with forced labor. Ruined in health, financially, and socially, Wilde died in Paris in 1900 at the age of 46.
A running gag is a play on words earnest and Ernest. Both Gwendolen and Cecily have the idea of marrying a man named Ernest. So, for the two, it is important to be earnest (Ernest?).
Gwendolen places her entire faith in this forename, declaring in Act I, “The only really safe name is Ernest.” Cecily shares her opinion in Act II, “I pity any poor married woman whose husband is not called Ernest.” Luckily, this world play works as well in German, with Ernst being a name and ernst meaning serious(ly).
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A blustering applause. From left to right: Reverend Canon Chasuble, Gwendolen Fairfax, Lady Bracknell, Algernon Moncrieff, Cecily Cardew, Miss Prism, John Worthing |
I admit that I was positively distracted elsewhere during the play.
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My dear Red Baron, thank you very much for your kind review of our humble effort to do Oscar Wilde “justice” (a pretty weak pun, indeed, I admit).
ReplyDeleteWe hope your review will make even more people come to the last six shows of Bunbury at the theatre of the Immoralisten!
Danke und weiterhin viel Erfolg. Einen Zuschauer konnte ich definitiv gewinnen.
DeleteDanke, Herr Höfert. Sie haben mich mit ihrem Blog-Beitrag daran erinnert, dass ich mir die Gelegenheit, wieder einmal Oscar Wilde's beste Komödie zu sehen, nicht entgehen lassen sollte - und so habe ich gleich für heute Abend gleich Tickets reserviert.