Ladies shine brightest in "The Importance of Being Earnest"

Is there any more scintillating yet subversive comedy in the English language than "The Importance of Being Earnest"?

The best display of Oscar Wilde's theatrical genius may be set back in 1900, when women didn't expose their ankles in public and titled slackers lolled in drawing rooms while munching cucumber sandwiches.

But the play is bracingly modern in its understanding of the mercurial nature of identity, the power games that men and women play in the name of love, and the social poses that can be assumed and discarded for the sake of expediency.

While Taproot Theatre's current staging of the often-revived script is not uniformly well-acted, it is handsomely mounted by director Karen Lund and her scene designer (and husband) Mark Lund. Most important, it is crisply spoken, so one hears the "ping" of every fiendishly clever, Wildean epigram.

It also boasts a very intelligent, fetching performance by Seattle newcomer Bethany Hudson. Done up in girlish pink duds, and cascading blond curls, Hudson's Cecily Cardew conveys both innocence and supreme cunning as she sets about getting exactly what she wants: a marriage to her guardian Jack Worthing's friend, Algernon Moncrieff (Aaron Lamb).

Hudson is well-matched by Charity Parenzini's Gwendolen Fairfax, a practical romantic who has her sights set on Jack (Kevin Brady), a wealthy young gentleman who has created a convenient shadow personality (and social excuse) named Earnest.

It is not just the fictive figure of Earnest that complicates this pair of courtships. It is also the imperious status-seeking of Gwendolen's mother, Lady Bracknell (Pam Nolte), a flaming snob in the manner of social climbers who weren't born to money — but clawed their way to it through matrimony.

Wilde's script toys cleverly with theatrical conventions that go back to Shakespeare's romantic comedies. That includes the ridiculous, hilarious tying up of all stray plot ends needed to reach a perfectly happy ending.

The choicest acting here is from the female half of the cast, including the haughty Nolte and Kim Morris as the jolly but guilt-ridden governess Miss Prism.

Their dominance in the show gives us a strong taste of Wilde's prescient feminism. But one also wishes Lamb and Brady would stop marching up and down the set, and overdoing the twitty-Brit vocal and physical mannerisms.

"Earnest" doesn't need such fussiness. It should be performed with elegant restraint — what the French call sang-froid and what Wilde practiced with such virtuosity.

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com