DATE: Thursday, November 20, 1997           TAG: 9711190075

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E3   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Theater Review

SOURCE: BY MONTAGUE GAMMON III, CORRESPONDENT 

                                            LENGTH:   66 lines

THE IMPORTANCE OF STRONG DIRECTING

A COUPLE OF PROMISING young actresses display considerable potential in The Actors' Theatre production of ``The Importance of Being Earnest,'' and some more experienced performers turn in serviceable work as secondary characters in this great comic classic.

Not all the acting, unfortunately, is up to the same standards.

Beth Vanderkerkhove uses a barely restrained ebullience to fill her character, the Victorian teen-ager Cecily, with a delightfully giddy, girlish charm. Diana Saafi makes a worthwhile professional debut as Cecily's counterpart Gwendolyn, a more poised young woman whose romantic side expresses in restrained glances and smiles what Cecily conveys with giggles and grins.

Local stalwarts Kathy Umberger and Jay Lockamy are thoroughly competent as Cecily's governess, Miss Prism, and as the country rector, Dr. Chasuble. They have been directed to play rather uninspired stereotypes, but their crisp execution usually outweighs a sense that their characterizations don't exploit all the dimensions written into them.

Kelly Klaers gets the crowd-pleasing role of Lady Bracknell, Diana's fearsomely proper mother. She's too young for the part but hints at a sense of the woman's icy resolve. Klaers is another performer whose professional technique balances a lack of directorial guidance. Ed Anderson's costumes, good throughout the show, are really superb for Lady Bracknell.

Mark Haynie fills two roles as servants Merriman and Lane, obviously doing what he was told to do with good heart and determination.

In the role of Jack, well-to-do bachelor of 29 who is both a responsible father figure to Cecily at his country estate and a young man about town in London, Joel Ladd gets little chance to use the intensity that has marked his best acting.

His inborn style hasn't the lightness the lines demand, and no one has guided him to play the irony of his dual situations.

Rarely do any of the characters show the sparkle and the crisp pacing that would do the script justice. Director Anthony Cinelli has instead filled the show with sight gags and often contrived physical jokes, rather sadly suggesting that he didn't have much faith in the humor of the dialogue. While it may seem silly not to trust the wit of Oscar Wilde over one's own, Cinelli's misunderstanding of the script goes deeper than that.

Wilde's aristocratic characters were not meant to be ``putting on airs.'' Their assumption of superiority is not forced, but comes naturally to them because their wealth and position did, in fact, place them in an elite group. They are neither foolish nor stupid, and their devotion to superficial style is itself a deliberately chosen facade. They are satirical creations, but not clowns.

When a director's program notes confuse the Victorian Era, when this play was written, with the Edwardian Era that began six years later and then draw fundamental sociological and aesthetic conclusions based on that error, there is more than a hint of wrongheadedness in the artistic approach.

When a deservedly well-regarded company such as The Actors' Theatre stumbles and yet maintains a reservoir of quality, then any conclusions about the company should be based on the parts of the show that are commendable, not on the problems. ILLUSTRATION: Graphic

THEATER REVIEW

What: ``The Importance of Being Earnest,'' by Oscar Wilde

When: 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays through

Dec. 14.

Where: The Actors' Theatre at Pembroke Mall, Virginia Beach

Call: 557-0397

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