ON THE STAGE

...The social and political thinking of the fin-de-siecle English upper middle class, their hope that education has not yet ruined the land, their earnest preoccupation with utter unimportancies, are pilloried in a phrase, castigated in an uplifted eyebrow, annihilated in a deprecating smile...

...There is no outstanding star: when John Worthing is in the background, director John Gielgud stands back, to give each person his due moment...

...She looks as though, had it been necessary, she might have given lessons to the Queen...

...At tin Royule Theatre...

...Among the persons of the tender sex (as others—not Wilde!—might have said in those earlier days) Margaret Rutherford is commanding, nay imperious, as Lady Bracknell...

...The antics of John Worthing, J. P., of the Manor House, Woolton, Hertfordshire, entangle the action...

...The unobtrusive excellence of the production gives the play a value perhaps even deeper than Wilde imagined...

...Over this artificial tangle of assumed names, the dialogue glitters like cloth-of-gold...

...John Gielgud the actor, as the Earnest John Worthing, plays with nonchalant ease...

...Piesented by the Theatre Guild and John C. Wilson, in ans'>ciation with H. M. Tennent...

...In the city, however, John (now calling himself Earnest) lives a gayer life than he thinks bents the country guardian of his ward Cicely...

...When Gwendolen and Lady Brackwell also visit John's country home, the complications grow riotous...

...The less developed roles of the governess and the curate verge toward the caricature, and are thus presented by Jean Cadell and John Kidd...

...His friend Algernon, seeking to meet Cicely — whom John has been keeping in the country — appears at the Manor House, announcing that he is Earnest...

...As Gwendolen, Kamela Brown is the superfine flourish of a society that knew itself unsurpassed...

...He has invented a brother, Earnest, a n'er-do-well whose escapades bring John often to his rescue in London...

...STRAND HOLDS OVER SHOW The New York Strand will hold Louis Prima and his orchestra on stage for a second week...

...John becomes engaged, in London, under the name Earnest, to Lady Bracknell's daughter, Gwendolen...

...The screen presentation is "Pursued," a United States Pictures Production, released by Warner Bros., and starring Teresa Wright and Robert Mitchum...

...The deft triviality of the Wilde comedy, in this consummate handling, takes on a new significance...

...Each of these characters, and performances, is a little masterpiece of self-satire...

...Featured with the band are vocalists Jack Powers, Cathy Allen and drummer Jimmy Vincent...

...For delicacy and harmony of integrated performance, for intellectual dalliance and delight, there is no greater treat along the Great White Way than the John Gielgud company in the Oscar Wilde play...

...yet he is matched in insouciance and off-hand unconcern by Robert Elemyng as the Earnest Algernon MoncriefT...

...Like most genius, he budded better than he knew...

...The wit of Wilde at its best, thrust and parried by seasoned players, scintillates, coruscates, and keeps an expectant audience constantly rising to higher levels of appreciation...

...Superb craftsmanship in the blended arts of the theatre makes the John Gielgud production of "The Importance of Being Earnest" an unmixed delight...

...The pattern of the performance is deftly woven, and consistently maintained...

...Jane Baxter as Cicely lays a few petals of country simplicity on the cheeks of the same superiority and sophistication...

...The stage show also features Frank Marlowe, musical comedy star, and Jane Wynn, dancer...

...Yet he knew a good deal — among other things, he understood how to leave a job for the players, beyond the mere reciting of his lines...

...By the brittle artificiality of their performance, the company have quickened, in this piece of brilliant- trifling, a keen and diverting satire on the society it presents...