In just over a month’s time, our production of The Importance Of Being Earnest is due to go live. How – you might ask – is the play still relevant now, almost 120 years after it premiered in London in 1895? Can Singaporeans today find themselves in this very Victorian comedy of class and courtship? Our artistic director and star Ivan Heng has a few thoughts to share about how we’re all Earnest in our own ways.
“There’s so much in Earnest that we’ll recognise today,” says Ivan, who will be reprising his role as the caustic Lady Bracknell from the 2009 production. For one thing, it’s a “genuinely funny comedy about love, marriage and the importance of being true to oneself. Everyone can relate to those themes.”
However, there’s a great deal more in Earnest that resonates even now. “It would be easy to dismiss it as shallow,” Ivan agrees. “But dig deeper and you’ll find that Wilde was writing about the conservatism, superficiality and prejudice of the moralistic Victorian society.”
In fact, in order to find happiness for themselves, two of Wilde’s main characters in the play – Jack and Algernon – had to assume alter egos to escape the very ‘earnest’ hell of a society obsessed with appearance and propriety.
It’s hard not to see a little of Victorian-era England in Singapore. “Jokes aside, we are a rather ‘earnest’ society ourselves,” Ivan observes. “We take everything so seriously – we’re dutiful, sober, solemn, self-righteous, complacent and… well, just plain dull! So I can’t help thinking that Oscar Wilde wrote this play for Singapore.”
Maybe that’s one of the reasons Singaporeans can’t seem to find much to laugh about. According to a Gallup poll released in December 2012, Singapore resides unhappily at the top of the world’s Unhappiness Index.
“I believe Singapore could be a far happier place to live in if we all could be a little less judgmental,” Ivan points out. “To borrow from Mr. Wilde, we could be happier indeed if we treated all the trivial things in life (like having high tea with your friends) seriously, and all the serious things in life (like watching property prices plunge) with sincere and studied triviality.”
Way back in 1895, Wilde wrote his “delicate bubble of fancy” to get his contemporaries to loosen up a bit, to see themselves onstage and laugh about it. “I think that’s part of the fun of Earnest,” Ivan says, “It allows us to laugh not just at the characters, but at ourselves – we watch what happens with a sense of recognition and knowing.”
