Just Dessert

BRAVER MINDS in our literary past have said that it is immoral, if not impossible, to divorce style form meaning. Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest and the delighted response that it elicited from Loeb Ex audiences last weekend challenge that ponderous view of art. A farcical confection, the play is concocted solely with equal parts elan and elegance levened with tart social witticisms. George Bernard Shaw perceived, with some astuteness, that the resulting delicacy is rather "heartless" because it lacks proximity to emotion. But to an audience suffering from the true heartlessness of reading period, the comedy is appetizing sustenance.

Food comes to mind as a metaphor because of the character Algernon's good-natured gluttony. While he and his friend Jack ponder the mess they have gotten themselves into by proposing to their beloveds under the false name of Ernest, Algy pops countless muffins into his mouth with fastidious greed. It is in such moments that the story of their romantic complications (resolved only after everyone has said a lot of terribly clever things) sows its comic seeds and reaps its harvest of laughter. The production succeeds because its cast and crew passionately commit themselves to being passionlessly and uncommittedly stylish.

The setting in which the amorous machinations take place is not as graceful in design or execution as it might be, but it is conceived grandly enough to produce a comfortably complete atmosphere. Artful painting on an interior wall and a quite remarkable tree for a garden scene are particularly noteworthy. More suited to the overall flavor of the evening, however, are the costumes, which include a number of beautiful dresses and astonishing hats.

THE TWO DIRECTORS (they may have "called each other a lot of other things first" before they called each other brother) have imported a sense of vigor to most of the cast. As Jack's intended Gwendolyn, Marie Kohler is delectable in both her appearance and her acting. Kohler's lines seem to roll effortlessly off her tongue with the haughty tone in which they were written to be delivered. Her counterpart, Algernon's Cecily, with whom she shares the funniest scene in the comedy, is not as stylish; Anne Ames, in her carriage and visage, mistakes movement for animation. Stephen Zinsser and Dennis Clearly, the two lovers, are both adequate to their tasks. They are languidly effete, though Zinsser is perhaps too effeminately so. And both appear to be enjoying themselves thoroughly. Sweeping onto the stage like a cold draught of air, Mary Ennis as Gwendolyn's imposing mother rivals her daughter's haughty demeanor. The actors taking the smaller parts, who vary in quality, all face the uninspiring task of being tasteless foils to the spicier coterie of leading characters.

The production -- though it occasionally adulterates its amusing recipe -- rarely forgets that, as Gwendolyn says, "In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing." It is not important to be earnest, but simply to be Ernest.