Ditto that

Mark Steyn on The Importance of Being Earnest, with a particularly good (though brief) meditation on the difficulty of making one's play "foolproof":

The Importance Of Being Earnest belongs to that enviable category of foolproof play. In the theatre, that’s the only definition of masterpiece that matters: given the actuarial odds of a great play falling into the hands of saboteurs, intentional or otherwise, the only option the author has is to render the work indestructible by players and stagers. It’s very difficult not to have a good time at Earnest: even in a dull production, when the play doesn’t seem to be about anything or anyone, it bounces jollily enough from epigram to epigram – handbag, carelessness, all women become like their mothers, etc. Some cockamamie concepts pan out – the Jazz Age vo-de-o-do sensibility of Oliver Parker’s 2002 film, for example; others you can’t quite believe you actually sat through – the West End transvestite production a few years ago starring Britain’s drag double-act, a pair of pantomime dames called Hinge and Bracket.

You know the plot: 1895, two chaps, neither called Ernest but both periodically pretending they are, and thus getting into complications with the ladies up in town, down in the country. Oscar Wilde’s play lives because the charm of its conceit is timeless: societal respectability, it posits, is the wispiest of veneers. Jack is a country squire but wholly self-invented, with no idea of who his “people” are. Algy is a Victorian lounge lizard, shifty, unreliable, but very winning. In theory, Lady Bracknell et al belong to a lost world, and thus the play ought to be a period piece, but the idea of gatecrashing society – of being at the party under false pretences – is forever. It’s far less “dated” than Hedda Gabler.

Steyn goes on with comments about specific productions, which comments are also interesting, at least to people who like me love the play and can always be talked into going to see the latest production thereof, even if it's a West End (of Houston) transvestite version.

I might add that the 2002 version to which he refers is as close to a perfect movie as I can think of. Every single character is played to perfection and with relish -- Dame Judi Dench as Lady Bracknell, Colin Firth as Jack, Rupert Everett as Algy (making you wish desperately that you could go back in time and cast him as Wickham in the A&E Pride and Prejudice that, but for the appallingly incompetent Wickham, would have been a practically perfect production itself), Frances O'Conner (whose delivery of lines like, "I intend to develop in a great many directions," frequently makes you want to pause the movie, back it up, and watch that line again), Reese Witherspoon (nailing one of the more difficult roles in the play and doing so with a reasonably creditable English accent withal), Tom Wilkinson and Anna Massey making the third romance endearing as well as amusing. And the gleeful score is perfect for the sensibilities of the piece -- even, perhaps especially, the musical numbers performed by Firth and Everett, in character, without voice doubles.

What I'm saying is, if you haven't seen this one, then do so at your earliest convenience.