#stephen-fry

#stephen-fry

When "The Importance of Being Earnest," by Oscar Wilde, opened, on February 14, 1895, in London, the date was well chosen. It was the Victorians, after all, who decisively turned the feast of St. Valentine into a mass commercial celebration, with would-be lovers concealing their identities behind an anonymous exchange of greeting cards and other tokens of desire. "Earnest," the fourth drawing-room comedy that Wilde had produced within three years, centered on the courtship of two young women, Gwendolen Fairfax and Cecily Cardew, by two young men, Jack Worthing and Algernon Moncrieff.

He lives up to the task. What is literally built around him is gorgeous. Rae Smith's set changes from a beautiful drawing room to a flamboyant garden to a dramatic reception room, marble statues and all. The costumes, too, also designed by Smith, are increasingly fabulous, none more so than Lady Bracknell's billowing skirts and sparkling jewellery. Jack and Algernon look, in every outfit, like they are straight off the red carpet at the Met Gala.

I guess it's all the normal human virtues - some of which are forgotten virtues - but one of the most important human virtues, I think, isn't even really considered a virtue, but it is one that changes the world.