Casting Performers for "The Importance Of Being Earnest" Play
Seeking performers for "The Importance Of Being Earnest" production. Please see the details below. About the project: THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST is often called the greatest comedy of the English stage, this is an absolutely hilarious, satirical farce from the supremely witty pen of Oscar Wilde, which skewers 1895 England’s rigid social conventions, mores, and romantic ideals. Conventions, mores, and ideals all of which, moreover, have parallels in today’s society. Two young men about town, Jack and Algernon, lead double lives to evade unwanted social obligations, both assuming the name and fictitious identity of Jack’s disreputable, younger brother Ernest. While doing so, they both fall in love with women who have firmly, resolved to love only someone of the name of Ernest. Their quest for true love and happiness is further complicated by the opposition of the domineering enforcer of social rectitude, Lady Bracknell (Algernon’s aunt and the mother of Jack’s love), who emphatically disapproves of Jack’s origin as an infant found in a handbag in the cloakroom of Victoria station! Additional info: Show Dates: April 25 - May 11, 2025; If you are interested, please apply.
9 roles
The play's protagonist. Jack Worthing is a seemingly responsible and respectable young man who leads a double life. In Hertfordshire, where he has a country estate, Jack is known as Jack. In London he is known as Ernest. Jack is in love with his friend Algernon's cousin, Gwendolen Fairfax.
The play's secondary hero. Algernon is a charming, idle, decorative bachelor, nephew of Lady Bracknell, cousin of Gwendolen Fairfax, and best friend of Jack Worthing, whom he has known for years as Ernest. Algernon is brilliant, witty, selfish, amoral, and given to making delightful paradoxical and epigrammatic pronouncements.
Algernon's cousin and Lady Bracknell's daughter. Gwendolen is in love with Jack, whom she knows as Ernest. A model and arbiter of high fashion and society, Gwendolen speaks with unassailable authority on matters of taste and morality. She is sophisticated, intellectual, cosmopolitan, and utterly pretentious.
Jack's ward. Cecily is probably the most realistically drawn character in the play. Like Gwendolen, she is obsessed with the name Ernest, but she is even more intrigued by the idea of wickedness.
Algernon's snobbish, mercenary, and domineering aunt and Gwendolen's mother. Lady Bracknell married well, and her primary goal in life is to see her daughter do the same. She has a list of "eligible young men" and a prepared interview she gives to potential suitors. Like her nephew, Lady Bracknell is given to making hilarious pronouncements, but where Algernon means to be witty, the humor in Lady Bracknell's speeches is unintentional.
Cecily's governess. Miss Prism is an endless source of pedantic bromides and clichés. Puritan though she is, Miss Prism's severe pronouncements have a way of going so far over the top that they inspire laughter. Despite her rigidity, Miss Prism seems to have a softer side. Also, she entertains romantic feelings for Dr. Chasuble.
The rector on Jack's estate. Both Jack and Algernon approach Dr. Chasuble to request that they be christened "Ernest." Dr. Chasuble entertains secret romantic feelings for Miss Prism. The initials after his name stand for "Doctor of Divinity."
Algernon's manservant. Lane appears only in Act I.
The butler at the Manor House, Jack's estate in the country. Merriman appears only in Acts II and III.
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