The Importance of Supporting School Theatre

On a whim, the Man and I went to see a High School production of The Importance of Being Earnest this afternoon.  It was an edited version, shortened to just an hour.  The cast of teenagers did a nice job - not a slick performance, but engaging, and they got plenty of laughs.  Oscar Wilde's lines sound just as funny with an American accent.

In the intermission, giving a nod to menu references in the play, tea and cucumber sandwiches and muffins were served - a version thereof, anyway.  The sandwiches were spread with cream cheese (no one thinks to put butter in sandwiches here); the muffins were not the bready English kind but cakey American ones; and the tea... well, suffice it to say, the tea was served with honey, not milk. So, not exactly authentically British - but a jolly spread, nonetheless.

We didn't find out until the end, but the son of a member of our trivia team was playing Lady Bracknell - splendidly pneumatic, and just camp enough without overdoing it.  Special credit to the girl playing Miss Prism: a stand-in because the billed actress was sick, she was recruited with only two hours notice and put in one of the best performances of the show.

As they took their bows, each member of the cast gave a thank you to the parents and backstage crew who had made the show possible, and the guy who'd played the butler threw out a heartfelt plea for us all to contact our Board of Education members and remind them to give as much support to school Arts as they give to school athletics.