The Michigan Daily-Thursday, July 10, 1980-Page 9
Arts
Labored Wilde a bit too earnest
By JOSHUA PECK
Oscar Wilde's The Importance of.
Being Earnest may be the crispest
comedy ever composed. Wilde's script
is stuffed with some of the cleverest and
liveliest aphorisms Wilde ever
dreamed up. English society, those who
stand woefully outside it, etiquette, and
the battle of the sexes have never been
so drolly exploited as they have here.
The play's witticisms resound with as
much vitality today as they did nearly a
century ago, when Wilde set them
down. But the fabric these jewels are,
set in is a bit more difficult to preserve.
Earnest is a comedy of manners, and as
the propriety of those manners
becomes more remote, a director needs
special care to keep Wilde's aping of
"society" etiquette fresh.
THE BLACK. SHEEP Repertory
theatre, quite surprisingly, has badly
bungled its staging of the Wilde
masterpiece. Jim Martin, though he is
rightly known as one of the more
capable directors to emerge from the
University's theater program, has led
his Manchester cast to an unfaithful,
unsound, and erratic production-this
from a cast composed of the Univer-
sity's most experienced thespians, all
of whom had a hand in last month's
superb Our Town.
Success for any production of Ear-
nest hinges on its characters' being
besotted with the starchy artificiality
that any comedy of manners calls for.
The fakery is of a very particular sort;
it is not the duplicity of one of Ten-
nessee Williams' women, or the pur-
poseful disguise of one of Shakespeare's
Wilde's fakery is just as amiable as a
heartfelt compliment, and ought to
come to his characters just as
naturally. That's a difficult balance,
certainly, but the repartee must flow
effortlessly without ever bowing to sin-
cerity-not even for a moment.
Of the cast's eight members (two of
the similar roles are played by a single
actor), only Carol Hart, in the role of
Cecily Cardew, and David Hunsberger,
who doubles as butlers Lane and
Merriman, are decked out in the plastic
facades the play demands. Hart has
perfected the art of vacuous smile, and
utilized it to marvelous effect here. She
addresses her dear uncle Jack (played
by her real-life husband Don Hart) with
the same sunny and totally synthetic
manner as she does her hated rival
Gwendolyn. The similarity of these
styles-whatever her "genuine"
mood-brings much-needed sparkle to
the heart (no pun intended) of the
play's humor.
HUNSBERGER turns in the funniest
performance of the eveningas a servant
with a visage only a step away from
being etched in stone. The very sight of
him is inspiringly silly; atop a body so
rigidly erect it looks to be brittle sits a
face with eyes and mouth drawn peren-
nially downward in an unwavering
disapproving grimace.
Yet this very same production that
houses a butler thus masterfully direc-
ted and enacted features, for example,
a Kathryn Long and James Reynolds
who never seem to stop whimpering
throughout their merciless presence on
stage. Rather than dialogue that
crackles with wit and- satire, we have
here the dramatic equivalent of a Nor-
man Rockwell illustration-old biddies
so laborously cute they are pathetic.
And Reynolds further burdens the ef-
fort by punctuating his every line with a
little bow at the waist. This may be a
first: a Protestant clergyman who
davens likea Chasid.
The two young men-about-town
whose romantic interests fuel the
comedy are played a bit less shakily by
Mr. Hart (Jack Worthing) and Terry
Caza (Algernon Moncrieff). But here,
as everywhere, there is too much
thinking going on. Wilde's epigrams
deserve the spotlight--a desert that can
only come to them if they fly trippingly
from the actors tongues, as if they
came up with observations of such
cleverness every day. But when Caza
spouts his epigrams-"Every woman
becomes like her mother. .. that's her
tragedy. No man does ... that's
his"-he seems to be struggling so that
the humor suffers.
ANOTHER PROBLEM with these
leading men is that Caza dominates his
good friends, and that imbalance is
never -reversed. The fact that Hart
never gets the better of his companion
kills the tension that might have made
the proceedingsmore interesting.
Patricia Rector is an overly com-
passionate Lade Bradnell, but her
disposition turns deliciously sour with
the third act. Kathy Badgerow, who
relies on physically funny business to
reap her laughs, is simply miscast as
Gwendolyn. The part calls for more
restraint than Badgerow is used to
exercising, and her director has been
lax.
Hannah Andrews' costumes are fine
for a shoestring, but Gary Decker's sets
could standa touch less tackiness.
Striking bus drivers
rally at City Hall
(Continued from Page 3) couragement from a patron of AATA.
willing to take the state mediator's John .Powell, a frequent bus rider,
suggestion that the two sides spend said, "The bottom line here is not the
more time at the bargaining table. language of the contract-language is
"We're prepared to talk all day no reason not to settle a bus strike.
tomorrow and Friday and into the There are a lot of issues more substan-
weekend," he said yesterday. tial than language.
ACCORDING TO Ettinger, the state- "Even if you have to stay out here all
appointed mediator plans to try a new summer," he added, "I'm willing to
strategy at today's 1 p.m. session. "He take my children where they have to go
will play a more active role, shuttling and to help others take their children,
between the two parties as they meet too." His words were greeted with the
separately," she said. chant, "The people united will never be
"I'm still not very optimistic," Et- defeated."
tinger added.
"Today was an eventful day only
from the publicity point of view," Ur-
sprung said, "not from the progress
point of view."
meeting for short periods together
followed by long sessions apart. Art kbtitjtEHot
The approximately 100 demon- 9 -530P
strators, their clothes dampened but T y tough Sunday
not their spirits, received en-
Marun walsn ann non Scnultz portray Cncago gangsters in nertoln Brecht'
1941 anti-Hitler play "The Resistable Rise of Artutro Ui." Presented by th
RC/Brecht company, the comedy plays Jule 9-13 and 16-20 at the Residentia
College Auditorium in East Quad.