Posted: 04/04/07

It’s all in a name
“The Importance of Being Earnest” performed as spring main-stage production

Leanne Ouimet | contributing writer
louimet@smcvt.edu

Ernest can’t be found in the program but he is the one character that proves to be most troublesome in the affairs of two passionate young ladies and two very single gentlemen. It’s a tale of "he loves her and she loves him" and all the obstacles that get in the way of true love and true identity.

One of the actors, Jayden Choquette, describes the play as a comedy about mannerisms and behavior. (Leanne Ouimet, photo)

The St. Michael’s College theater department performed “The Importance of Being Earnest” by Oscar Wilde as this spring’s main-stage performance from March 28-March 31 in McCarthy Arts Center .

Oh Ernest

Peter Harrigan, director and St. Michael’s theater professor says the play went very well on opening night when 130 people attended the performance.

“They did very well anticipating the audience response and emulating what they did in the rehearsal process,” he says.

The play is about mistaken identity and how the creation of an imaginary friend or brother can become more of an inconvenience than an excuse for wild play and adventures in the city, particularly for John “Jack” Worthing, played by first-year Rory Fitzgerald.

Confusion arises when the main character’s name changes from Jack in the country to Ernest in the city. Throughout the course of the play, Ernest becomes engaged to Gwendolen Fairfax, played by Victoria Townsend, in the city and Cecily Cardew, played by Micaela Mendicino, in the country.

Jayden Choquette, a first-year actor who plays Merriman the butler, says the play is very much focused around the interactions between one character and another.

“It’s a comedy about mannerisms and behavior; the way people act around certain people and how they act totally different around others,” he says.

Kevin Parise, a sophomore psychology and theater double major, portrays the character of Algernon who woos and proposes to Cecily under the name of Ernest.

“Algernon is, well, he loves himself a good deal but not in an asshole kind of way," Parise says. "He’s just pompous like all people were in those days. Everyone has their chin up a little bit."

Because the play is meant to be performed in a British accent, each actor met with dialect coach Peter Jack Tkatch both one on one and as a group, Harrigan says. The cast also watched a lot of British television and movies to “help fill in the gaps and get the sound into their ears,” he says.

Parise says that the British accent was necessary, not only because the play is set in London, England but also because the play relies heavily on language and words.

“Words are the most important part of the show because there isn’t a lot of action,” he says. “The first big chunk of rehearsal was learning the dialect. Once we got that, it all kind of fell together from there.”

Junior Michelle Merola used the months before opening night to create each costume from scratch, except for the male costumes which were ordered.

“It was a lot of fun to research into the historical era, finding the fabrics and having all the costumes made,” she said.

After Merola researched the time period from 1888-1896 to learn what people were wearing at the time the play was set, she collected hundreds of pictures, went to Web sites and browsed Sears catalogues before she settled on styles for the final costumes. She and Harrigan even went to Boston for a day to look in seven different stores for just the right fabric, she says.

Stage manager and junior Tina Shantz, says the production team had to coordinate with the Invisible Children movie screening going on in McCarthy Arts Center on Wednesday, which was opening night. Senior Jesse Holland, house manager, made sure people coming to the play ended up in the right theater.

“It was a matter of your table goes there and ours goes here,” Shantz says about tables for both events that were set up in the lobby of McCarthy.

The play was successful with steadily increasing audiences sizes for all four nights. (Leanne Ouimet, photo)

No money, no problem

All production costs for this semester’s performance were covered by St. Michael’s, Harrigan says. Since the theater department didn’t have to pay production costs, there was no need to charge admission.

“We encourage people to come, and having people pay may be a detriment to their coming,” Parise says. “We want to share our culture with everyone; some people do it with music or art; we just do it with theatre.”

The administration funds the theater department because all on-stage productions are not only entertainment but educational opportunities to get students on stage or working behind the scenes. Students can earn credits while working on performances.

“It’s wonderful in terms of we get to do things for educational purposes as opposed to doing things just to sell tickets,” Harrigan says.

Harrigan also says that more focus can be put on which play will be most beneficial to the students rather than which play will attract the most audience members. It also gives the department a chance to ensure that in four years at St. Michael’s, each student will have been exposed to all eight genres before they graduate.

“They give students a taste of everything,” Parise says.

This semester, Harrigan and fellow theater professors Cathy Hurst and John Paul Devlin chose “The Importance of Being Earnest” because it exposed students to the genre of classical comedy and has always been one of Harrigan’s favorites.

“I saw it in junior high school and have always been interested in it,” he says. “I thought the students we have now would do well in the roles.”

This play was not only chosen by the faculty but also directed by faculty. There are about three to six student-run performances each semester and one faculty directed performance, Harrigan says.

“Generally, the faculty directed performances are a little more produced, a longer performance and usually more publicized,” Harrigan says.

But there were only two faculty members, Harrigan and Devlin, who had a hand in producing this performance. Nine students formed the ensemble cast and 64 students worked back stage on costumes, lighting, scenery and the running crew.

The laughter says it all

Harrigan says about 130 people came to Thursday night’s performance and 110 showed up the night before. But the number of audience members kept climbing. On Friday, 240 people were in the audience and Saturday the play attracted a full house in a theater that seats 366 people. Parise says that with big audiences comes big laughs.

“It was so much better to have an audience,” Parise says. “People laughed at our jokes! In rehearsal, when you expect jokes to come and you don’t get a laugh it’s hard but tonight I didn’t even expect some of the laughs we got.”

Actor Kevin Parise says, "The great thing about theater is that you're always thinking of way to do it better." (Leanne Ouimet, photo)

Harrigan says the audience tended to be diverse in terms of age; seats weren’t only filled with St. Michael’s students. Many people from the local community, like Mike McGuire from Winooski, came to watch the theater department’s production.

“I do have to say that Aunt Augusta was fantastic,” he says. “She was over-bearing and imposing and did it very well. And Cecily was particularly fascinating. The costuming was great too.”

He did say, however, that in some parts of the play, certain responses were underplayed and could have been more forward to get a bigger laugh.

"Overall, it was excellent,” he says.

Hurst thought so too after she saw the play on opening night.

“It had a really charming, funny, fresh style,” she says. “The actors looked like they were having fun. The language was a challenge but I thought they handled it beautifully.”

Still, there is always room for improvement, Parise says. He says that each night gives him a chance to reflect on ways to perform better.

“The great thing about theater is that you’re always thinking of ways to do it better,” he says. “And you always look for ways to better yourself.”