Randich Takes on Wilde
Drama faculty member Jean Randich will direct Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest to open the Connecticut Repertory Theatre’s 2017-18 season.
The production, which marks Randich’s directorial debut with the Connecticut Repertory Theatre, will be held at the University of Connecticut’s Harriet S. Jorgenson Theatre, in Storrs, CT, from October 5–15.
"What is it about this play that feels so modern, so of our time?" asks Randich. "As an Irishman, an outsider, and as a man who loved men, Wilde was acutely aware of the exclusionary rituals of the late Victorian British upper class. He captures these rituals in minute detail and lampoons them at the same time. Marriages, funerals, christenings, all rites that give our lives meaning, are tossed into the hopper-and somehow the subversion strikes us as terribly liberating and funny. Even more outrageously, Wilde peppers his play with allusions to his flamboyant life and fluid sexual identity, clues he coyly hides in plain sight."