Far More Important Than Sincerity Poem by gershon hepner

Far more important than sincerity
is style,
combining hauteur and hilarity
with guile,
but as for being earnest, just forget
about it:
when something serious meets you tête-à-tête,
doubt it.
Of this point of view the ones who are
the sternest
critics do not know the wise steer far
from earnest.


Inspired by Charles Isherwood’s review of a performance of Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest, ” at the Avon Theater, Stratford Ontario (“Lady Bracknell is Back, With a Slightly Unladylike Air”) :
As the superb classical actor Brian Bedford proves in the splendid production of “The Importance of Being Earnest” at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival here, when it comes to inhabiting the imperious spirit of Oscar Wilde’s Lady Bracknell, being biologically female is immaterial. Possibly this should not be surprising. Wilde’s monstrous paragon of patrician British matronhood, who takes propriety to the point of absurdity and well beyond, has a personality so formidable it all but obliterates gender. Sex — her own and everybody else’s — is far less important to Lady Bracknell than matters of decorum, respectability and breeding. (That’s breeding as in upbringing, thank you, not procreating.) If a two-headed hermaphrodite arrived in her drawing room with the proper social bona fides, she would coolly offer a cucumber sandwich. Or rather, two cucumber sandwiches. When Mr. Bedford strides onstage in the full regalia of a Victorian gentlewoman, a tuft of angry-looking tulle crowning his head, you instantly come to share Lady Bracknell’s indifference to insignificant matters, so forcefully does he communicate the implacable will of this glorious theatrical creation. Mr. Bedford knows that there is no room for low camping in high comedy. And while “in matters of great importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing, ” as one of the play’s characters asserts, Mr. Bedford manages to accommodate both. His performance is as impeccably stylish as it is thoroughly sincere.

8/26/09