Baylor Theatre to Present 'The Importance of Being Earnest'

by Angela Best, student newswriter, (254) 710-1961

Baylor Theatre will stage Oscar Wilde's most popular play, The Importance of Being Earnest, beginning at 7:30 p.m. April 24-28 and at 2 p.m. April 29 in the Mabee Theatre of Baylor University's Hooper-Schaefer Fine Arts Center.

Described as "brimming with wit and style," The Importance of Being Earnest features two young society men of Victorian England, Algernon Moncrieff and John "Jack" Worthing, who both adopt an alter ego of the same name - Earnest. As the two men try to hide their double lives, the result is "comic mayhem" when the two young ladies they are attempting to woo get caught up in their antics and both insist the objects of their affection must bear a name which inspires confidence - Earnest.

"The Importance of Being Earnest is a remarkable play, if only because it is enduringly funny," said Steven Pounders, Baylor Theatre faculty member and director of the Baylor production. "Wilde filled the play with political allusions, inside jokes for his friends, Victorian place names, and other obscurities that by all rights should shoot well over the head of a contemporary audience, but after more than a hundred years, we still 'get it.' Despite the play's satire of a very specific class of Victorian society, the humor seems to bring just as much raucous laughter to modern American audiences as to the Londoners of 1895."

The cast of the Baylor production includes Austin Terrell, Justin Locklear, Michael Summers, Meredith Owens, Haley Phillips, Joey Melcher, Mary Laws, Brittany Howard and Clay Wheeler.

Tickets are $15 for the general public, $10 for Baylor students with a student ID and are available in the Hooper-Schaefer Fine Arts Center box office. For more information, contact the department of theatre arts at 710-1865 or visit www.baylor.edu/theatre.