South Africa’s dedicated art cinema chain, Cinema Nouveau will screen the LA’s Roundabout Theatre Company’s performance of The Importance of Being Earnest for four nights commencing 18 June.
This production of Oscar Wilde’s most revered play comes straight from the American Airlines Theatre of Broadway “Live’ series which is captured in high definition (HD).
Written by Wilde in 1895, The Importance of Being Earnest is still one of the most performed stage plays to date. Wilde was one of the most revered and colourful writers of the Victorian era. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London’s most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. Today he is remembered for his plays and the circumstances of his imprisonment, followed by his early death at the age of 46.
The Importance of Being Earnest is a farcical and a comedic masterpiece about class, courtship and good old-fashioned name dropping.
Dashing men-about-town John Worthing and Algernon Moncrieff pursue fair ladies Gwendolen Fairfax and Cecily Cardew. Matters are complicated by the imaginary characters invented by both men to cover their on-the-sly activities—not to mention the disapproval of Gwendolen’s mother, the formidable Lady Bracknell.
Tony Award winner Brian Bedford directs and stars as Lady Bracknell in this trivial comedy for serious people.
With 13 awards under his belt, including six Tony Awards for Best Actor in a Play, Bedford is primarily a stage actor. He is known for his English-speaking interpretations of the French playwright Moliere, including Tony Award nominated performances in Tartuffe, The Moliere Comedies (a double bill of the short plays The School for Husbands and The Imaginary Cuckold) and The School for Wives, for which he received the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play.
The Importance of Being Earnest will be screened at Cinema Nouveau theatres on 18, 22 and 23 June at 7:45pm, and on 19 June at 2:30pm. Tickets are priced at R120 per person and R90 per person for Discovery Vitality and Edgars Club members. For more information on the screening of this play, please visit www.sterkinekor.com.
The six Cinema Nouveau sites in the country are:
Rosebank Nouveau (Johannesburg)
Brooklyn Nouveau (Johannesburg)
Bedford Nouveau (Johannesburg)
V&A Nouveau (Cape Town)
Cavendish Nouveau (Cape Town)
Gateway Nouveau (Umhlanga)
