Guthrie cast sees 'The Importance of Being Earnest' as an elixir for laughs

Splits happen.

Just days before "The Importance of Being Earnest" went into technical rehearsals at the Guthrie Theater, a cast member abruptly parted ways with the company. Broadway actor Corey Brill flew in from New York to join the ensemble of the classic Oscar Wilde comedy that launches the Minneapolis theater's 61st season.

Brill plays dapper landowner Jack Worthing, one of the two sporting and whimsical gentlemen around whom the plot revolves and who famously mouths the line that gives the show its name. Picking up the role from Beejan Land, Brill was getting up to speed with his lines, costumes and chemistry with other castmates. But his Johnny-on-the-spot entry may add a new thread to Wilde's "trivial comedy for serious people" that has a storied production history at the Guthrie.

Long before Rainn Wilson rocketed to fame on "The Office," he played Algernon Moncrieff in Joe Dowling's fizzy 1998 staging of the show where Barbara Bryne was unforgettable as Lady Bracknell.

Director David Ivers, the artistic director of South Coast Repertory Theatre who previously directed "The Cocoanuts" and "Blithe Spirit" at the Guthrie, hopes his new production will also be similarly remembered. And to make it so, he is excavating Wilde's language, stuffed as it is with sexual innuendo and subterfuge, for maximum laughs.

"When you mine it, it offers up little bonnet after little bonnet after golden egg," Ivers said. He evoked another metaphor for the carbonation he hopes to find in "Earnest."

"This is a play that dances like Perrier, which is like the essence of lime, but the delivery of the text needs to be 7UP."

Ivers has tapped stalwart Sally Wingert, who previously played Miss Laetitia Prism in Dowling's production, as Lady Bracknell. A-list stage veteran Michelle O'Neill has been cast as Prism while East Coast-based newcomer Michael Doherty plays Algernon and Adelin Phelps, a Minneapolitan who was in the Guthrie's "Steel Magnolias," plays the imaginative Cecily.

We chatted with the cast recently before a rehearsal. The conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Q: How do you see your character?

Sally Wingert (Lady Bracknell): She reminds me of Mrs. Bennet in "Pride and Prejudice." Like Mrs. Bennet, she wants the best possible match for her daughter. It's part of a larger idea, coupled with her deep affection for her nephew Algernon, that family is what makes the gorgon tick.

Adelin Phelps (Cecily Cardew): She's talked about as this sweet, innocent thing, and I'm like, let's subvert that. I'm getting to craft a kind of little lunatic, and I mean that in the best way. She's wild, very intelligent, has a deep capacity to love and is untethered from reality. I love that she's beautifully unhinged.

Daniel Petzold (Merriman): He is the best butler in all of England. It's a delight because we're not following his journey or his plight in life. He provides a little texture in the show and you get to see the wildness of the other characters through his eyes. Or he pops in to set up a new scene, keep the rhythm and keep going, and make sure this [show] flies.

Q: What do you find most interesting or surprising about your role?

Michelle O'Neill (Miss Laetitia Prism): David's allowing people to bring forth their unique abilities in the playing of these characters. I love Prism. And I do have a favorite line: "Memory, my dear, Cecily, is the diary we all carry about with us." We carry it in a difficult sense or with such splendor.

Michael Doherty (Algernon Moncrieff): Algernon is incredibly cynical. He does so much professing that he will never marry, that he comes to embody the idea of earnestness in the play. That's his journey. He's all veneer and performance to protect himself from hurt. And then it all comes crumbling down the moment he makes eye contact [with Cecily]. By Act 3, he's incredibly earnest, because he's finding that the thing that he doesn't think he wants is the thing that he really does.

Phelps: I have a vivid imagination, which sometimes can be a scary thing. So, it's fun to live in a character [Cecily] that has such a vivid fantasy life that becomes a reality. She manifests her destiny.

Q: What makes "Earnest' resonant, or not, in these times?

Wingert: Ivers has moved [the setting] forward by 10 years or so to the Edwardian period, which allows the women to have a slightly less encumbered costume look but also the mores became a little bit looser.

"Wilde wrote these two ladies — Gwendolen and Cecily — to intellectually manhandle these men. So, a lot of young women will come and be delighted to see themselves represented in a period piece as sharp as they are. That's kinda gorgeous.

Phelps: I struggled with why we do this play and had a wonderful conversation with David [Ivers] a long time ago. It's the potential for people to laugh, and in a way that's surprising and freeing. We need laughter so much to move people with the potential to change. I come back to how important delighting other people is.

'The Importance of Being Earnest'
Who: By Oscar Wilde. Directed by David Ivers.
When: 7:30 p.m. Tue.-Sat., 1 p.m. Sun. with 1 p.m. matinees on select Saturdays. Ends Oct. 15.
Where: Guthrie Theater, 818 S. 2nd St., Mpls.
Tickets: $29-$82. 612-377-2224 or guthrietheater.org.