Několik dní před Vánoci se studenti vypravili na divadelní představení "Jak je důležité míti Filipa" v anglickém jazyce. Představení se líbilo, následující řádky snad hovoří za vše.
The Importance of Being Earnest
Just two days before Christmas 2009 we exchanged the December bleakness for two hours of midsummer warmth. I cannot say whether the summer setting is originally used in the script but I think none of us complained. But what am I writing about? I am trying to describe my impressions of a play I saw with my classmates of 6A6 in December – The Importance of Being Earnest. The name of the author itself promised an interesting experience – the play was written by an outstanding English writer and playwright Oscar Wilde, whom I have already admired for quite a long time. All in all, the famous author put together with the „no-matter-what-it-is-the-point-is-there's-no-school“ factor, we all gladly squeezed ourselves in the uncomfortable chairs of the Semilasso Concert Hall.
The play itself was quite controversial – and so were our responses to it. I am not going to describe the whole plot here– the key point is that it is really important to be Ernest - or earnest, at least. The first shock came when the main character started spitting already half-chewed pieces of muffins at the front row of the stalls with the audience. I do not think he “hit the target“, but still. Then, few minutes later, he and his friend started fighting, touching each other in a very provocative way and rolling on the floor over the muffin chunks. Luckily, I was not seated in the front row so I did not have to worry about being showered with muffins. What I found rather inappropriate, though, was the way one of the actors expressed her character's personality. Maybe it was just me, but to me she looked like an angry hen, running on the stage from one corner to another, cackling her lines in an unnatural high-pitched voice.
But enough of criticism – the truth is that I actually liked this play very much. Not only because it was a real English play, not one of those performed by the Czech actors, usually with disastrous pronunciation – but the combination of great plot, impressive stage setting, excellent performance of the actors (well, most of them) and their charming British accent made this play near perfekt. Who cares about flying muffins - it was not us who “got the shower“after all.
Of course I hardly can speak for all of my classmates but I think most of us liked the play and some of us really enjoyed ourselves. For myself I can say: more cultural events like this.
Miloslava Doušková, 6A6
Několik poznámek režiséra
Director´s Notes
Jack Worthing lives in the country and pretends to have a brother in London called Ernest, so he has a perfect excuse to slip away to the city. Jack´s friend Algernon has created an imaginary acquaintance called Bunbury, so that he too has a reason for escaping the tedium of his own social life in London.
When Jack falls in love with Algernon´s cousin Gwendolyn and Algernon falls in love with Cecily – who is Jack´s ward, life begins to get difficult. Both women are under the impression that these men are called Ernest and neither could possibly marry a man with other name. Added to which there is Gwendolyn´s tyrannical mother Lady Bracknell, who refuses to allow Jack to marry Gwendolyn when she discovers that as a baby he was discovered lying in a handbag, left at a railway station.
First performed in London in 1895, this comedy of manners is the most famous of Wilde´s works. It is a masterpiece of truth about class and gender – disguised as an airy trifle.
