Witty words in search of wise companionship

"In matters of grave importance," Oscar Wilde tells us, "style, not sincerity, is the important thing." Yet when it comes to making us laugh, sincerity is every bit as necessary as style. Peter Hall's Theatre Royal Bath production of "The Importance of Being Earnest," which opened Wednesday at the Ahmanson Theatre, serves Wilde's witticisms on a silver platter garnished with plenty of ham. But without any genuine conviction behind the ceremonial frivolity, this staging makes one of the most effervescent plays in the language seem comically effortful if not downright earnest.

Not that this glorious anthology of priceless epigrams is easy to pull off onstage. Hall, who's made Shakespeare the centerpiece of his distinguished career, faces a similar problem with Wilde's masterpiece as he does with "Hamlet" or "King Lear," in that an audience is waiting expectantly for all the best lines. It's the theatrical equivalent of an over-prepared honors class in which all the students are ready to shoot their hands up the moment the teacher asks one of the assigned questions.

The difference, of course, is that the Shakespearean tragedies lure you into the hypnotic pathos of their stories, and before you know it you're lost in a heartbreaking reality. "Earnest," on the other hand, derives its strength from the perfection of its language. The poet W.H. Auden famously described Wilde's masterpiece as "the only pure verbal opera in English." For him, the play creates a quasi-musical universe in which "the characters are determined by the kinds of things they say, and the plot is nothing but a succession of opportunities to say them."

Given the familiar friendliness of the dialogue -- and who doesn't have a personal favorite? -- it's imperative that fresh life be injected into its delivery. The only way to do this is through colorfully credible characterizations -- the words have to believably tumble out of the fictional mouths forming them. And it's here where Hall's staging never gets any traction.

Hampering things are the two actors employing the same Earnest alias on the well-bred young coquettes they hope to conquer. Algernon, the foppish aesthete who can't resist his own romantic whims any more than he can the pile of cucumber sandwiches laid out for his guest, hasn't the panache to excuse his devouring appetites in Robert Petkoff's self-conscious performance. As Jack, the country gentleman who tries to protect his lovely ward, Cecily, from the designs of Algernon, whose cousin Gwendolen he's desperate to wed, James Waterston imparts a stiff and dour quality to the role.