The Importance of Being Earnest

Abbey Theatre, Dublin

Oddly, the Abbey doesn’t allow patrons in till a quarter till 8 (and the performance is scheduled for 8 pm). So I wandered around the building—there are paintings as you go upstairs to the balcony and bar, and there are paintings all around the room upstairs. Some are by John Yeats (W. B.’s dad), such as the portrait of Lady Gregory. (At the National Gallery today, I saw similar portraits, because I went to the Yeats gallery.) I eventually sat down and continued reading the Dublin book Liz lent me, until it was just about time and I went downstairs, bought a program from a cute boy, and sat down: three rows back, dead centre. If I had been in the front row, I would have been at knee level, but I liked where I was, because I got a good look at detail. Costumes, costumes, costumes!

Scenery: a French café at the turn of the century, when Oscar Wilde has gotten out of prison and is living in poverty and experiencing writer’s block. It is a colorful, whimsical, Art Nouveau sort of café, with floral stained glass windows in curving shapes, a stained glass double door with the naked male figure that’s also on the posters and the program. There are lamps with brightly colored, flower-shaped glass shades. Upstage left is a bar counter and plenty of bottles and glasses. Upstage left are café tables and at the back an ivory-colored chaise lounge and matching cushioned chair. There are several circular café tables covered with pale pink cloths and then green satin tablecloths over the pink. Downstage center was one of these tables, along with a couple of café chairs. Oh, yes, I should mention the curving staircase—to the left and above the double doors. And in front of the chaise lounge were two tall lampposts with coat hooks around them (later serving as trees in the garden scene). Downstage right is one of the café tables, which begins with a peacock sculpture atop a matching peacock-feathered tablecloth.

Rather than a normal start to The Importance of Being Earnest, there’s the framework story with Oscar Wilde at this café at the end of his life. Several attractive young men—prostitutes—are hanging out there and Oscar Wilde shows up, aged, wearing purple velvet and knee breeches and shoulder-length hair as when he was young. He has confrontations with men who disapprove of him, and Frank Norris shows up and sits down with him center downstage. Oscar drinks a green beverage—absinthe—and Frank thinks it’s disgusting. They have a conversation about Oscar’s poverty, and that if he’d only write he wouldn’t live in poverty, but Oscar explains that his writing isn’t about misery (but if he had written after prison, it would be about misery—and I think I should add here that he did write and publish a couple essays concerning prison life, and of course “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”). The conversation is reminiscent of Frank Norris’s biography of Oscar Wilde. They talk about his once-popular plays, and after Frank leaves, so does everybody else, and Oscar is the only one onstage, at the center table, reminiscing about The Importance of Being Earnest, and he begins to recite the first few lines, till the voice of Algernon takes over offstage. Algernon calls his butler, Laine, and next thing you know, Oscar gets up and becomes Laine while Algernon comes onstage talking, and The Importance of Being Earnest has begun in earnest. Somewhat later, when Algernon and Earnest are together and Laine announces Lady Bracknell and Gwendolyn, there’s a somewhat “awkward” moment: a Bosie-like young man shows up instead of Gwendolyn, and he runs into another room, while Oscar/Laine frantically looks around, again announcing the two women, and he grabs off the lounge a green peacock-feather appliquéd skirt, which he proceeds to quickly put on. He goes to the peacock tablecloth, grabs the peacock and tablecloth, and runs out the upstage centre double doors. Waiting for the two women, Algernon and Earnest are starting to look bored and perplexed downstage, crossing their arms and such, and finally, “Laine” is heard offstage saying, “Lady Blackwell and Miss Gwendolyn.” In march, center stage, Lady Bracknell (Oscar) wearing a peacock skirt, a peacock shoulder cape, and an enormous hat with a peacock on it, accompanied by a Bosie-like and very blonde Gwendolyn in a beautiful 1890s dress in yellow and turquoise. (I say Bosie-like, but “she” really looked female, the actor was that pretty.) The audience was laughing and applauding loudly!

The dress that Gwendolyn was wearing in “her” first scene was like something out of a Harper’s Bazaar fashion plate. A yellow floral skirt with a turquoise waistcoat, a yellow and turquoise striped necktie over a white shirtwaist, and over the waistcoat and skirt was the open-fronted dress itself, turquoise embroidered in yellow swirly designs, and huge gigot sleeves. Very mid-1890s, and very like something I’d make.

But anyway, the one complaint I came up with is that Cicely had, well, not really five o’clock shadow, but enough that “she” should have had “her” pale face waxed. Gwendolyn, on the other hand, was convincing as a female, with golden hair in a chignon under a spiffy brimmed hat. The actor had very bright blue eyes and pale skin, and a resemblance to Bosie, Lord Alfred Douglas. Oh, yes, they both spoke in falsetto, unlike Lady Bracknell, who is described as having a Wagnerian voice.

The ending of the play has the framework story again, though briefly. Earnest is saying, “…the vital importance…” and Lady Bracknell/Oscar says, “of being earnest,” in a very earnest voice. Normally, it’s a funny line, but here it becomes sad. The lights dim, characters dance around Oscar and he changes out of his gown and hat and it wearing the purple velvet suit, and soon he and the waiter from the first scene are the only ones on stage. Oscar returns to the central table (I think there’s some change in the set first) and asks the waiter for absinthe. The waiter goes behind the counter and picks up the crystal decanter—it’s now empty of the green liquor, and he politely informs Oscar of this, but mentions that there’s white wine. Oscar takes out a cigarette during this, and the play ends with him lighting a match, lifting it, and blowing it out.

A melancholy and haunting, and more or less nonfiction, framework for an otherwise very comic play. Actually, I’m certain that the writer of this framework first read Frank Norris’s bio on Oscar Wilde, because I recall something very similar in it—perhaps even almost the same scene, since it was a bio with tidbits of conversation between Oscar and his biographer.

Oh, yes—I should mention that there was a second Lady Bracknell costume, similar to the first but even more comical a version of 1890s women’s fashion. It was much the same in construction, but the fabric was a metallic gold, orange, and brown material, with three dimensional silk flowers and leaves and vines attached, curving from the side of the skirt and around the cape, and of course big orange flowers on her brimmed hat. The audience clapped and laughed. This is a show in which the costumes—or at least some of them—got ovations.
I’m still at the park, and that’s the second time I’ve seen a group of three Goth young women in Dublin, whether or not they’re the same ones. I’ve seen a few other individuals who definitely looked Goth, but it seems to be only females—at least in a flamboyant sort of way, as opposed to guys with black sleeveless shirts, tattoos, and many piercings.

My last breakfast with the tour group—at the Trinity College breakfast cafeteria (they have another dining hall besides that)—involved lots of chatting, so that we were at the able well after most of us were done eating. But anyway, the reason I mention this is because the party animal Dave told the group about some kids like in their early twenties, who he and Lynn met at a pub the night before. He said that one of them was so outgoing and talkative that he made Bob look quiet, which I found rather amusing given the way Bob talks (but at least he says really interesting things—he teaches a history class at I forget which college). Dave described these “kids” as wild, and finally he said just to give us “an idea of how wild these kids were,” he explained that one of them had tattoos covering his arms and chest and countless piercings, and there were bumps up and down his arms where—I think where he’d inserted needles. These wild kids were delighted that they were Americans and wanted Dave and Lynn to stay with them all night, but they explained that no, they had to return to their friends. The kids didn’t think they should hang out with other Americans while in Dublin (and by the way these boys were Irish).

Since it’s a Sunday, hopefully there won’t be a drunk coming in and making lots of noise at the hostel….of course, I’m planning on going to bed around 10 pm, so I should get plenty of sleep no matter what happens. Well, unless the building burns down. I shouldn’t come up with such ideas. Anyway, there’s the possibility that, since this is Sunday, lots of people will be getting to bed early, and I’ll still have to climb into bed in the dark.

At least the hostel is very clean—that’s the important thing—I’ve read some scary things about Dublin hostels, such as they tend to be dirty, and then there was Karen’s account of having a hole in the middle of the mattress. Compared to that, I have it easy!