BY ISAIAH FRIZZELL
As Present Rhymes With Past
The Liberty Theatre Company (TLTC) is one of the Valley’s most exciting and forward-thinking sources of the harmony and sophistication we enjoy here through the timeless art of live theater and stage production. While they are an entirely separate entity from the actual physical Liberty Theater building, that phenomenal theater is where we gather to delight in their productions.
The Liberty Theater itself, in downtown Hailey, hosts a variety of intriguing, unique and accessible nights, via the shine of Pete Villamarescu, and collectively they are the right folks to be working with TLTC. With much of the theater’s nights hosting local and national music acts with an extraordinary range of styles, there’s always a reason to go and when it’s a play with that TLTC embossed on it, you shan’t miss!
Now, then, when you invoke the name Oscar Wilde?! “Got my tickets!”—everyone.
Emily Meister, the lissome and luminous new executive/artistic director of TLTC, exclaims, “Oh my God, Oscar Wilde is just incredible. And this play is amazing. It’s been done for so many years now in a multitude of ways, and it’s just always relevant, with so many layers and depth of layers to it. There are so many, you know, varying perspectives that you can bring to life, and here, through the creative lens and the voice of the director, Drew Barr.”
Does the shine on the shadow of our social manners match those of the Victorian days?
More from Meister, later. But first, who is this Wilde man?
Monsieur Wilde
Oscar Wilde was a phenom of wit, humor and biting social critique carving a luscious style of penetrating, timeless analysis. A prolific writer of poetry, essays, short stories and criticism, his one novel, “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” is a beloved, magical, although tragic, tale deserving of re-reading. If you haven’t read it, head to Iconoclast Books and discover the book. It’s in most readers’ top 10. Brilliant, frightening, funny and profound, Wilde wrote seven major plays and this one novel. However, he was very active and considered an “enfant terrible” for his biting criticism of nearly everything in publications of the time.
Wilde in Manner and Mind
Wilde’s downward spiral commenced as his relationship with young poet, Lord Alfred Douglas, outraged Douglas’s father, the Marquess of Queensberry, who blasted Wilde across society. Against the advice of friends who urged him to flee to France, Wilde decided to sue the Marquess for defamation. Disastrous. During the libel trial, evidence of Wilde’s relationships emerged. Wilde dropped the suit and was convicted.
Sentenced to two years’ hard labour, the maximum penalty for “gross indecency,” and jailed from 1895 to 1897, brutal prison conditions were deleterious. Prison doctors claimed his heart was weak and he was confined to his cell for 23 hours a day. He would walk a treadmill and be made to pick oakum (a fibrous substance used for shipbuilding, which had to be teased from recycled ropes and mixed with tar). In November, Wilde collapsed in the chapel from illness and hunger. His right eardrum was ruptured in the fall, which later contributed to his death. Wilde would live only three more years after release, dying from cerebral meningitis in November 1900 at the ripe old age of 46.
In exile, he wrote “The Ballad of Reading Gaol,” a poem on the hanging execution of a Royal Horseguards cavalryman and “De Profundis” describing his spiritual journey through the trials.
TLTC in Earnest
Director Drew Barr’s take on the play is urgent and timely. Again, you might find that those late-Victorian manners rhyme hilariously with the way we interact in our times. It’s unknown if there’ll be texting, sexting and phone scrolling but how the story unfolds, the witticisms, wisdom and satire, are a guarantee to engage and envelop the mind.
The lilied and effervescent Emily Meister has a keen understanding of art, production and locale. She became intimately involved upon arrival. Meister has been a performing artist for decades and is in her eighth month as the new executive director of TLTC. Already she has bequeathed an energy and fascination that weaves a rich tapestry of harmonic elegance and delight. The Importance of Earnest’s production has only begun—three days as of this writing—and is already full-tilt boogie.
“We have three out-of-town actors and five local actors. It’s an incredible cast, so dynamic. And what’s so neat is in hearing from everyone as we’ve been coming together, everyone has such a passion for this play. A couple people have done the work before or performed before, but not in the role that they’re performing for this run. And so everybody has kind of… it just feels like alignment in each person that has come together to create and collaborate. There’s just such an incredible energy, sharing those stories and, you know, we’ve had full-on discussions, hours of discussions already, extracting and speaking to so many parts in this play, each character, and an incredible dialect coach came up from Boise, gave a master class and will be guiding us throughout.”
Eight months in and she’s shepherding a brilliant production with a team of high-energy, resplendent talent, both local and flown in. Full circle, the brilliant Naomi McDougall Jones will color the stage!
The Liberty Theatre Company, along with their collaborators, a separate entity we know as The Liberty Theater, are our Valley’s royal gems to be protected and engaged with, through our community spirit of art and excitement.
“The Importance of Being Earnest” runs Feb. 5 through Feb. 21, after a preview on Feb. 4.
Get your tickets here: https://www.libertytheatrecompany.org/
