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HPU earnest in
staging Wilde’s work

"The Importance of Being Earnest": Runs 7:30 p.m. Thursdays and 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays (except 4 p.m. only May 13) and 4 p.m. Sundays through May 14. Tickets $12 general; $8 students, seniors and HPU staff; $5 HPU students. Call 254-0853.

By John Berger
Special to the Star-Bulletin

A fresh talent is making a memorable debut in Hawaii Pacific University's production of "The Importance of Being Earnest." HPU freshman Nicole Carlucci proves perfect as Cecily Cardew, an educated but innocent young woman of the leisure class.

Carlucci does well with the demanding comic elements of this classic Oscar Wilde farce. Most of all, she imbues her performance with the charisma necessary to make us believe that a jaded older gentleman would fall in love with her at first sight and almost immediately resolve to mend his ways.

Carlucci gives excellent support to the male leads, Lance Rae (Algernon Moncrieff) and Alan Sutterfield (John "Jack" Worthing). The late-Victorian England gentlemen amuse themselves by fabricating associates whose purported problems allow them to escape their social responsibilities.

Worthing has a country estate where Cecily lives as his ward. The misbehavior of a fictitious brother named Earnest requires him to spend time in London.

Moncrieff lives in London but often declines family gatherings to visit a fictitious friend who is ill.

Both men live by the motto, "My duties as a gentleman never interfere with my pursuit of pleasure."

Worthing is pursuing Gwendolen Fairfax (Melinda Maltby, daughter of the production's director, Joyce Maltby), who believes his name is "Earnest" and who makes it clear that she can only love a man with that name.

When Moncrieff sneaks out to Worthing's estate to meet Cecily, she assumes he is long-lost brother Earnest and confesses she can only love a man named Earnest -- and certainly not someone named Algernon!

That's small comfort to Worthing when he arrives home unexpectedly and assumes his friend has less than honorable intentions. And Worthing finds he has other things to worry about when Gwendolen and her formidable mother, Lady Bracknell (Martha Walstrum), turn up unexpectedly. Both men discover the importance of being Earnest.

This is one of Wilde's best plays and it still plays well 105 years after he wrote it.

Sutterfield and Rae play off each other with increasing zest as the story develops. Sutterfield is in character throughout, seeming quite at home with his English accent, and does justice to Wilde's razor-sharp material. He brought down the house at one point without saying a word.

Rae delivers a hilarious interpretation of the cynical and foppish Moncrieff, earning many laughs on opening night.

Walstrum has a number of great sardonic lines as she makes a welcome return to the stage. Tom Sinnett does double duty appearing as Moncrieff's bizarre manservant in Act I and absent-minded Dr. Chasuble thereafter. Jan McGrath (Miss Prism) is the governess with an important secret, and Joakim Jivenius makes his Hawaii debut as Worthing's dutiful butler.

Sandy "Sweetheart" Clark does a great job with the costumes. Darren Hochstedler (set and lighting designer) proves that "less is sufficient" with his effective use of furniture and a few props to suggest the luxurious milieu.

Director Maltby and her cast do the rest in making "Earnest" a low-key delight.

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