The Importance of Being Earnest with Zombies
3 1/2 out of 5 stars
Runs through Nov. 1 at freeFall Theatre, 7 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday; 6099 Central Ave., St. Petersburg; general admission is $33-$48 with discounts for students, teachers, seniors and military; freefalltheatre.com.
When offered a play called The Importance of Being Earnest with Zombies, most sentient humans will wonder: How prominent are the zombies? Well, wonder no longer: the freeFall Theatre adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s masterpiece is at least 80 percent Wilde throughout its three acts, and the hordes of undead, when they do show up, never really distract us from the author’s satirical purposes. In fact, the zombie theme is so innocuous in Acts One and Two, it works mostly as an occasional in-joke, a cheerful salute to Halloween not much more serious (or frightening) than Lowry Park’s ZooBoo. Yes, we hear occasionally about “ambulators” and “corpse-hunters,” and yes, we eventually see some of the undead on stage.
But this Earnest is never in earnest about zombies, which means it succeeds mainly because Wilde’s delectable script is as mirth-provoking as ever. And I mean this literally: on the evening I saw the show, almost all of the many laughs were for Wilde’s dialogue, not the zombie jokes; and the standouts of the evening weren’t the walking dead at all, but Wilde’s wonderfully snobbish Lady Bracknell and supremely vain Gwendolyn and Cecily. Do you want to be frightened? Well, try Howl-O-Scream. But if you want to be tickled by a famously witty script, then the zombies of Earnest with Zombies won’t interfere. All the difference they make can be measured with a severed finger (ouch!).
In case you’ve forgotten that Intro to Drama course you took in college, here’s the stripped-down plot: Jack Worthing and Algernon Moncrieff are two friends in love, respectively, with Gwendolyn Fairfax and Cecily Cardew. But both Gwendolyn and Cecily are absolutely committed to marrying only a man named Earnest, which is, under the circumstances, an obstacle. A further problem is that Gwendolyn’s mother, Lady Bracknell, prohibits her somewhat submissive daughter from marrying Jack until the latter rises above his station — which is Victoria Station, where he as a baby was found in a handbag. Can Jack produce at least one high-class parent and thus win Gwendolyn forever? Can Algernon, posing as Jack’s raffish brother Earnest, convince fantasist Cecily that he’s more interesting than his real name? Can any other play puncture Victorian pretensions as well as this one?
The verbal wit in Earnest is universally admired, and the zombified freeFall production, deftly directed by Eric Davis (who also adapted the script and designed the attractive, elegant sets), doesn’t detract from it one bit. How could it, with this acting? For example, Susan Haldeman, who gives us Lady Bracknell to a T, dominating her daughter and her daughter’s suitor with crushing indifference to anything but money-consciousness disguised as propriety. As Cecily, Maya Handa Naff is wonderfully charming, in love with herself and bored to tears with the demonology that her teacher Miss Prism insists she study (in Wilde’s original, the subject is German).
Then there’s Kelly Pekar, whose Gwendolyn is a young Lady Bracknell-in-the-making: although smitten with Jack, her interactions with him and Cecily already betray a domineering side that’s bound one day to bloom tyranically. As Jack, Nick Lerew is a likable figure, sincere (I almost said “earnest”) in his affections and utterly devoted to Gwendolyn; and as Algernon, Daniel Schwab is deviously playful, sure when he first hears about her that he’d like to meet Cecily, and then certain upon meeting her that the next step is marriage.
Excellent as ever is Matthew McGee in the roles of two different servants — one of them ought to be more vigilant about zombies — and as Cecily’s tutor, Jennifer Christa Palmer is so rigorous and humorless, she’s finally very funny.
Only the usually superb Larry Alexander doesn’t quite fit here as Dr. Chasuble – it’s hard to place his accent (Irish? Welsh?) and his persona feels more naturalistic than the others. (He’s also given an activity in Act Three — holding a séance — that’s the only add-on to Wilde’s script that really doesn’t make sense.)
One spectacularly successful element of the show is the period costuming by Amy J. Cianci: Some of these outfits are so beautiful, they seem destined for a fine arts museum. Loryn Pretorius is responsible for the comically ghastly zombie makeup, and Matt Davis’s steampunk weaponry adds a special touch.
So pass the word: Oscar Wilde is undead (ouch!) and well at freeFall Theatre. At the end of the evening, it’s his play and not the zombies that will leave you smiling. Think silly, not transgressive.
Or were you worried that poor Oscar would be spinning in his grave (ouch!)?
This article appears in Oct 8-14, 2015.