The run in Cleveland was fun, but the real treat in this production was the addition in Chatauqua of Play House alumna Margaret Hamilton in the role of Miss Prism, a role she had performed fifty years earlier at the Play House before she went on to Hollywood fame and fortune. Maggie (as she liked to be called) was at the Play House playing in The Corn Is Green, and one night at the old Club on 77th Street, she was sitting at the big bar and a number of us had formed a phalanx around her so she could have a little social time without the usual crush of autograph seekers. I overheard her say that she had played Prism fifty years earlier, and I jumped into the conversation. I asked Obie if he didn't think she should reprise her role in Chatauqua since she'd be up there anyway for the reprise of Corn? How could she refuse?

At Chatauqua, she was, of corurse, quite the celebrity. And since you have to walk everywhere on the grounds, she was always surrounded by adoring fans, children and adults alike. I never saw her tire of the grind of greeting this crush of people. She treated every single person as if they were the most important person on the planet. I must have heard her do, "And your little dog, too!" a hundred times during the two weeks she was with us that summer. A great and gracious lady.

She was very nervous about remembering her lines. Even though she was always letter perfect, she felt that she was having memory problems (she was in her seventies at the time) and fretted constantly. She needn't have worried. I will never forget the night at Chatauqua during the speech about the return of the handbag, when the audience started to respond to something other than the line of laughs Maggie had been playing. Sharon and I were on a platform stage right in the scene, but watching the old pro. As the new laugh developed, Maggie went with it, changing the timing and emphasis of almost everything she had set and took the new laugh where it wanted to go. I decided that night that that's what I'd like to do when I grew up.

REVIEWS:

CLEVELAND MAGAZINE: Earnest in Earnest, by J. M. Demaline

If only it weren't so earnest. Oscar Wilde, who delighted in desanctifying sacred cows, is treated as one himself in the Cleveland Play House version of The Importance of Being Earnest.

Earnest is, simply put, the most gloriously funny comedy in the English language. Wilde had an evil genius that mercilessly magnified the foibles of his class in faultless caricature, and in Earnest he created the quintessential drawing room satire. The heroes are fribbles, the servants unflappable, and Lady Bracknell a nemesis who personifies every upper-class bigotry of the age. Subtitled "A Trivial Comedy for Serious People," it makes game of itself and the audience, for the Importance of Being Earnest is itself a contradiction as well as a masterly play on words. The greatest importance is in not being earnest--ever.

The two heroes, Jack Worthing and Algernon Moncrieff, are certainly never earnest, except in their pursuit of pleasure and a pair of young ladies--Gwendolyn, a nearsighted pinnacle of feminine perfection, and Cecily, a giddily romantic girl. Jack and Algie tell the truth only when it suits them, which is seldom; as two fashionable young bachelors-about-town, their only concern is for nothing more serious than dressing and dining like dandies.

Jack successfully woos Algie's cousin Gwendolyn, though, following his ardor-triggered flow of compliments, she reprimands him, "I hope I'm not perfect, that would leave no room for improvement." One spanner in his works is the indomitable Lady Bracknell, Gwendolyn's fond mama. For Jack has lost both his parents, a piece of carelessness Lady Bracknell can't abide. His ancestry, as far as he knows, is a handbag left in Victoria Station, Brighton line.

The real problem, though, is that both Gwendolyn and Cecily have an unnatural fondness for the name Earnest--a name which Jack gave to his imaginary brother, whom he uses as a reason to escape his ward Cecily in the country in order to visit Gwendolyn in town. Wilde resolves the ensuing complications by play's end, with astonishing wit and enviable style.

At the Play House, The Importance of Being Earnest is diverting but not what is should be. Wayne Turney is enormously engaging as Algie, Joe Lauck and Mary Adams-Smith perfectly charming as Jack and Gwendolyn. On the minus side, Jo Anna Collins' Miss Prism has no business on a professional stage, and Richard Halverson's Lady Bracknell does the old girl in. She's no longer enraged by the encroaching ways of the under classes, nor horrified by the imbecilities of the hired help. Halverson has reduced Lady Bracknell to life-size.

Halverson does much better a director. The production is stylish and smooth, although too often one is left with the feeling that the whole thing is being taken a bit too seriously. ...