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.