{"id":401663,"date":"2026-07-17T02:22:18","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T02:22:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/401663\/"},"modified":"2026-07-17T02:22:18","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T02:22:18","slug":"long-beach-shakespeare-co-camps-up-the-importance-of-being-earnest-to-great-effect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/401663\/","title":{"rendered":"Long Beach Shakespeare Co. camps up \u201cThe Importance of Being Earnest\u201d to great effect –"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Screenshot<\/a>Photo by Mark Chen <\/p>\n

In my early 20s \u2014 a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away \u2014 I counted The Importance of Being Earnest as a fave. But well before turning 30, all that verbal slapstick left me cold \u2014 and so, decades later, I was planning to skip Long Beach Shakespeare Company\u2019s new production.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen again,\u201d I thought, \u201cthe last time I chanced one of their non-Shakespeare offerings, September 2025\u2019s A Doll\u2019s House<\/a>, it was one of the best things I saw all year<\/a>. And it\u2019s not like I think Earnest is a bad play, so\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n

Good choice, Greggory, as director Rebekah Walendzak Slepski\u2019s New Ro take deliciously leans into the silly with just the right self-conscious style to tickle even if Oscar Wilde doesn\u2019t delight as he once did.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve never seen Earnest, you may as well skip the rest of this review and proceed directly to buying a ticket, because you shouldn\u2019t shuffle off this mortal coil without having seen a good production of this drawing-room classic (maybe the drawing-room classic). But if you\u2019re still reading, here\u2019s the story: although Jack (Adriano Brown) keeps a house in the country \u2014 where his ward Cecily (Jacqueline Vellandi) resides \u2014 he loves London life, so he\u2019s invented a younger brother named Ernest whose supposed profligacy Jack frequently uses as an excuse to go to town. He lives life there under that fictional brother\u2019s name, pursuing the affections of posh Gwendolen (Angie Green) and having a (not literally (although\u2026)) gay old time with her cousin Algernon (Cole Flores) \u2014 who himself knows a thing or two about a well-placed fiction in the service of pleasurable pursuits. Gwendolen feels she could never love anyone not named \u2018Ernest,\u2019 and Cecily fancies herself in love with Ernest, and Algernon goes out to the country posing as Ernest, and\u2026.<\/p>\n

In the program, Slepski claims that \u201cEarnest endures because it understands a timeless truth: we all wear masks\u201d and \u201cbeneath the laughter lies a surprisingly modern question: Who are we when no one is watching, and who do we become when the world insists we a play a role.\u201d Frankly, I don\u2019t buy it. I don\u2019t think there\u2019s anything beneath Earnest\u2019s silly surface.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s more than okay, because this is just where Slepski succeeds. From the moment the lights come up, the cast has the camp amp turned to 11, mugging so hard that maybe 15% of their dialog is directed to the audience rather than to each other, thus inviting us in on the joke that this isn\u2019t even serious comedy, but only (\u201conly\u201d) a highly calculated attempt at style over substance. Had they reined it in to the more mannered delivery that we usually get with Earnest (for example, in the 1952 film adaptation), I, for one, would have enjoyed it far less.<\/p>\n

Because the entire cast revels in this approach, it\u2019s a bit misleading to single anyone out. But let\u2019s just say that while Cole Flores ravenously chews the scenery (a term that\u2019s usually a put-down, but not here), there isn\u2019t a person treading the boards who isn\u2019t both hungry and has a good set of choppers.<\/p>\n

Apropos of \u201cscenery,\u201d although this bare-bones take on Earnest would\u2019ve worked without anything to speak of on this front, Max de Bernadine has come up with a set design that is not only highly functional but also yields a few surprises. Elsewhere in the mise en sc\u00e8ne, Terry Hill\u2019s costumes are far nattier than we have any right to expect in a black box.<\/p>\n

Seeing another production of The Importance of Being Earnest after all these years doesn\u2019t make me like it any better. My taste in art has simply traveled too many miles from I loved it so. But Long Beach Shakespeare Company\u2019s production does remind me that, so long as you\u2019re dealing with material of a certain craft and quality \u2014 and say what you will about Wilde, you can\u2019t say he lacks on that score \u2014 there are always new ways to stir up old embers and generate a little present-tense warmth.<\/p>\n

The Importance of Being Earnest at Long Beach Shakespeare Company
Times: Fri\u2013Sat 8:00 p.m., Sun 2:00 p.m.
The show runs through July 25.
Cost: $16.50 to $26.50 (including fees)
Details: (562) 997-1494; LBshakespeare.org<\/a>
Venue: Helen Borgers Theatre, 4250 Atlantic Ave., Long Beach<\/p>\n

Related<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo by Mark Chen In my early 20s \u2014 a long time ago in a galaxy far, far…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":401664,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[9720,131,133,132,9722,20888],"class_list":["post-401663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-curtaincall","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news","tag-rln","tag-shakespeare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=401663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401663\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/401664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=401663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=401663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=401663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}