It's stirring to think what sorts of plays Oscar Wilde might have written if his life hadn't imploded after The Importance of Being Earnest. Earnest is the greatest English comedy after Shakespeare, and it's like no other play that Wilde had written to that point. Featuring one brilliant bon mot after the next, offering characters as unparalleled as the mendacious Jack and Algernon and the hilarious Lady Bracknell, Earnest is at once scorching social satire, dazzling verbal frolic and just plain silly marital farce.
But it was while Earnest was still in production that Wilde was charged with homosexual acts and sentenced to two years of hard labor. Those two years broke him physically and psychologically, and he died not long after his release. One of the greatest minds in English literature spent his last days in exile and despair.
If we don't have any post-Earnest plays by which to be charmed, we do have a few written earlier — and An Ideal Husband, currently playing at American Stage, shows us a Wilde who's working his way toward Earnest, while still paying obeisance to conventional English melodrama and the French well-made play.
The melodrama concerns a British politician, Sir Robert Chiltern, who has a reputation for spotless honor but who in fact jump-started his career with an embarrassing crime. When he is visited by the unscrupulous blackmailer Mrs. Cheveley, he's offered a choice: either publicly promote an Argentine canal which he knows to be a fraud, or suffer scandal when Cheveley publishes an incriminating letter. Sir Robert's problem is exacerbated by the high ideals of his wife, who makes it clear that she only loves him because of his integrity.
Thanks to Richard B. Watson's splendid playing of Sir Robert, and Magdalyn Donnelly's fine portrayal of Lady Chiltern, this plot element holds our attention all through the tense first act, and brings us back for the second quite unaware of how it can be managed. It's the theatrical equivalent of what in chess is called zugzwang, meaning that every available choice brings trouble.
But if this plot is what keeps our attention on the stage action, it's the character of Sir Robert's friend Lord Goring that points us toward Earnest and toward the aesthete Wilde himself. Lord Goring, played with too little sharpness by Louis D. Wheeler, is a dandy and an aphorist, locked in constant battle with his conventional father, and more concerned about his lapel flower than about issues of state.
It's Lord Goring who has lines like "Other people are quite dreadful; the only possible society is oneself," and "The fact is, dear father, this is not my day for talking seriously." It's Lord Goring who keeps admiring himself and his triviality, and who repeatedly reminds us of the play's author, famous for his wit. In fact, those many moments when Lord Goring tries caringly to aid his friend Chiltern feel uncomfortable, all too somber: surely this character should instead be delivering idle epigrams and pilfering cucumber sandwiches.
Well, no matter: it's enough to hear Lord Goring explain that "I love talking about nothing — it is the only thing I know anything about" to be reminded of the glories to come with Earnest. And it's fascinating to see Wilde work, somewhat unsteadily, with a figure who in his next play would be given the utmost freedom.
There are 12 characters in An Ideal Husband, but adapter Daniel Morris has all of them played by four actors, three of whom I've mentioned and one of whom, Amanda Collins, is excellent as the devious Mrs. Cheveley and as Chiltern's sister Mabel. Several of the minor characters are played in drag, and the choice seems appropriate, a salute to a playwright who in our own times could actually marry his Lord Alfred Douglas. Todd Olson's direction deliberately emphasizes the artificiality of the cross-dressing, and costume designer Anne Miggins makes no real attempt to convince us that he is she.
Jiyoun Chang's drawing room set features classical columns and several antique sitting areas, but is weakened by a thinnish curtain backdrop, and, in Act Two, by unconvincing portraits of Lord Goring. On the subject of Act Two, its solutions to the problems posed in Act One depend too heavily on coincidence (but this is melodrama, after all). John R. Malinowski's lighting is impeccable.
So: it's not Earnest but it's on the way. And if you're interested in Wilde, this'll fill some gaps in your knowledge of that great talent.
Or maybe he'd say, along with Lord Goring, "I'm sorry I did not stay away longer. I like being missed."
This article appears in Nov 24-30, 2011.