The Theater: Frivolity's Finest Hour

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST by OSCAR WILDE

Adroit, stylish, nimble, this is a first-rate revival of a classic. Here is Wilde, the autocrat of the dining table, drop ping epigrams like pearls before wine.

With The Importance of Being Ear nest Wilde raises frivolity to high fash ion, attains a comic nirvana through sheer nonsense. Apart from a wonderfully sly-tongued cast, which this production has, the play demands a director who can crack the combination of its elegant wit and satirical wisdom with the silky fingers of a safe robber. Stephen Porter is just that sort of director, and the stamp of his assurance is his total trust in the playwright.

It takes a great deal of trust. Consider some of the outlandish elements of the play: its baby found in a handbag, its imperious dowager, Lady Bracknell (Elizabeth Wilson), who is "a monster with out being a myth, its one young man, John Worthing (James Valentine), who invents a dissolute brother, and its other young man, Algernon Moncrieff (John Glover), who blithely proceeds to impersonate him. This is farce walking the tightrope of absurdity. But it is also farce at its most urbane — as insolently monocled in manner as it is killingly high-toned in language.

In this game of verbal lawn tennis, the two bogus brothers are matched with two demurely saucy maidens. As Cecily Car dew and Gwendolen Fairfax, Kathleen Widdoes and Patricia Conolly lob and volley Wilde's lines with devastating precision. The Fourth of July will be a little early this year. Over Manhattan's Circle in the Square Theater, comic flares light the night sky.