Paper Mill's "Earnest'': Saving the Best for First

The first thing you notice when you take your seat for "The Importance of Being Earnest" at the Paper Mill Playhouse are the warning signs. There's a fake proscenium inserted into the real one, and a pretend box built into the margin, where Chris Spencer Wells mimes Oscar Wilde, waving to imagined friends in the audience before the action starts.

It seems as if director David Schweizer is telling us we're not really seeing the play but a production of the play, and the cast is in on the joke.

It suggests he really doesn't trust the play, which is not a good sign. But then the curtain rises and you put your concerns aside. The banter of Algernon and Jack (Jeffrey Carlson and Wayne Wilcox) sets off at a cracking pace. If you don't know or don't remember the plot, no matter. It's a loopy melange of deception, mistaken identity, a lost baby and a couple of girls with the inexplicable desire to have a husband named Ernest.

Annika Boras smolders as one of the girls, Gwendolyn. It's really not necessary for her to smolder - this is farce after all - but it's awfully nice that she does. And the star, Lynn Redgrave, gives us a Lady Bracknell both hilarious and terrifying to the lovesick Jack. The costumes by David Murin are smart. Alexander Dodge's sets are clever and sumptuous.

It's in the second act where we're reminded that we've been warned.

Part of the problem is that the action is much more in the hands of Zoe Winters as Cecily. She seems overmatched by the part and resorts to shouting far too much of it. Of course, the poor thing isn't helped much by the director, who has decided to make her servant (Wells again) nearly deaf, so her everything she says to him has to be shouted. He's also palsied, which gives us a tedious sequence where he wobbles through serving tea. Now, I like acne and fat jokes as much as the next guy, but rarely has so much effort been put into making humor out of physical shortcomings to so little comic effect. (And why are the servants dressed like 18th century French courtiers in knee breeches and powdered wigs?)

Cynthia Mace gives us a terrific dotty Miss Prism.

But the crucial sign that Schweizer doesn't quite trust the play is that he has Redgrave come downstage and deliver many of her imperious and cracked social observations to us instead of the rest of the characters. It really doesn't become Lady Bracknell to be saying, in effect, "Here are the jokes, folks." It slows the whole enterprise down, and Wilde needs speed to be effective.

Any opportunity to be in the presence of Lynn Redgrave and Oscar Wilde is worth taking. But if you happen to be carried off by a severe chill or a babysitting emergency at intermission, you can at least rest in the knowledge that you've seen the best of what the Paper Mill's "Earnest" has to offer.

"The Importance of Being Earnest" runs through Feb. 15, with performances Wednesday through Sunday. More information here.