The Importance of Being Earnest

This brilliant tour de force by Oscar Wilde has delighted millions around the world since the play’s first production in1895. One of the wittiest plays ever, it is a buoyant comedy of manners celebrated for the lighthearted ingenuity of its plot and its inspired rapid-fire dialogue.

From the play’s vivacious opening in Algernon Moncrieff’s London flat to its hilarious finale in the drawing room of Jack Worthing’s country manor this comic masterpiece will keep you breathlessly awaiting each and every plot twist. Jack and Algernon are best friends, both wooing ladies who think their names are Ernest, “that name which inspires absolute confidence”. In this farcical comedy the protagonists maintain fictitious identities to escape burdensome social obligations. Set in late Victorian London, the play’s major themes are the triviality with which it treats serious institutions like marriage, and the resulting satire of Victorian ways.

This hilarious madcap farce about hidden and mistaken identities, secret engagements, lovers’ entanglements, and the never-ending vanity and selfishness of high society members will have you laughing out loud. You’ll delight at the witty banter, well-crafted jokes and insults at the expense of the upper classes and the ridiculousness of human behavior that have helped make The Importance of Being Earnest, Wilde’s most enduringly popular play.

A mainstay of high school curriculum for decades this extremely clever and undeniably silly story about eccentric characters is a powerful social satire and criticism of Victorian high society’s shallowness and materialism. It’s one of few pre-20th century comedies able to have maintained its laugh factor to the present day.