Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest Program notes by Eric Bentley

Mimeograph on offwhite paper, 2 pages, printed one side each

The Black Mountain College Players present
THE IMPORTANTANCE OF BEING EARNEST by OSCAR WILDE

Characters: John Worthing, J.P. John Gifford
Algernon Moncrieff Egbert Swackhamer
Reverend Canon Chasuble Addison Bray
Merriman, a butler James Stranch
Lane, a butler Christian Hines
Lady Bracknell Renate Klepper
Hon. Gwendolyn Fairfax Carol Ann Ostrow
Miss Prism, a governess Roxane Dinkowitz

Scenes: Act 1 Algernon Moncrieff’s Flat in Half-Moon Street,
Act 2 The Garden at the Manor House, Woolton
Act 3 Drawing-Room of the Manor House, Woolton
Time: 1895 Place: London

Staff: Stage Manager Louise Minster
Assistant Stage Manager Nell Goldsmith
Costume Manager Marilyn Bauer
Stage Electrician James Stranch
House Manager Fred Goldsmith
Ushers Patsy Lynch, Liese Kulka, Joanne Wacker, Helen Wright

The settings were designed by Louise Minster
The settings were constructed by Louise Minster and Jane Slater
The costumes were designed by Jane Slater and Marilyn Bauer
The costumes were created by Jane Slater, Marilyn Bauer, Helen Lounsbury, and Jeanne Wacker
Barbara Dreier helped with the making of the curtains
Dramatic Director Robert Wunsch
Art Consultant Josef Albers

A NOTE
Bernard Shaw, W.B. Yates, James Joyce, and Sean O’Casey: these four Dubliners have been among the few first-rate talents of our time. In their rejuvenation of English wit they were preceded by a fifth Dubliner: Oscar Fingal O’Flaherty Wills Wilde (1854-1900). Three alumni of Trinity College, Dublin-Congreve, Farquhar, and Goldsmith- had carried the tradition of English comedy from the 17th to the 18th century. Oscar Wilde, a fourth alumnus of Trinity, revived the tradition at the end of the 19th century.
Wilde’s affectations and still more his disgrace gave him notoriety which has overshadowed his merit as critic as artist. That he was much more than a decadent dandy of the Yellow ‘Nineties is known only to the few who read his The Should of the Man under Socialism with its demolition of bourgeois humanitarianism; or The Critic as Artist with its illuminating discussion of the state of culture in our era; or his four comedies.
Of these the best is The Importance of Being Earnest. Like Beaumarchais, Oscar Wilde writes the epitaph of a class and of a period in words which are so funny that they are taken to be unserious. Wilde is called superficial, and there is nothing wrong with the epithet provided we have a healthy respect for the art of surface which so many English writers- not to mention Americans and Germans- are too Earnest to appreciate.
The play is a repudiation of Earnestness; that is why the title proclaims the contrary. The play maintains that Earnestness is infinitely less serious than Wildean wit. The author calls it A Trivial Comedy for Serious People, meaning (A) a comedy which will be thought trivial by the Earnest and (B) a comedy of surface for real critics. Real critics will perceive that Wilde is as much a moralist as Bernard Shaw but that, instead of presenting the problems of modern society directly, his wit coruscatos, intermittently revealing the ruling class could feel about Shaw that at least he took them seriously. But the outrageous Oscar (whom they took care to get rid of as they had got rid of Byron) refused to see the Importance of Being Earnest.
Eric R. Bentley