By Oscar Wilde
Theatre Royal Bath / Peter Hall Company
Directed by Sir Peter Hall

Apr 18—22, 25—29, May 2—6, 9—13 at 7:30pm
Apr 22 & 29, May 6 & 13 at 2pm
Apr 23 & 30, May 7 & 14 at 3pm
BAM Harvey Theater
Tickets: $30, 50, 75, 85
Running time: approximately 2 hours, 20 minutes

What’s in a name, anyway? Plenty, it turns out, especially if you’re Ernest, the scandalous—and fictitious—brother/alibi of Jack Worthing, a strait-laced dandy in Victorian England just itching to have a bit of fun in London while away from his country estate. It’s a time when style trumped substance and—this being Wilde at his most incisive—Jack’s games soon spin hilariously out of control. In an effervescent staging by Sir Peter Hall, fresh from his definitive As You Like It that delighted BAM audiences last spring, The Importance Of Being Earnest is a delirious contradiction in terms.

Lynn Redgrave stars as the domineering Lady Bracknell, a font of outlandish quips in a work rife with witticisms, who is determined to have her daughter Gwendolen marry well. Her cunning and pompous pronouncements propel a plot as delightfully convoluted as it is ingenious. Identities are contrived and mistaken. Women fall in and, just as effortlessly, out of love. Egos are (slightly) wounded. And ostentation ultimately gives way to redemption.

Production design by Kevin and Trish Rigdon
Sound design by Rob Milburn and Michael Bodeen