The Importance Of Being Earnest (Wendy Hiller) Part 6 of 11

"The Importance of Being Earnest" by Oscar Wilde

link below to playlist of all 11 parts of this "The Importance Of Being Earnest":
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=749CF199F94D9B7F

Ann Thornton ... Cecily Cardew
Rosamund Greenwood ... Miss Prism
Henry Moxon ... Rev Canon Chasuble
Sydney Arnold ... Merriman
Gary Bond ... John Worthing, JP
Jeremy Clyde ... Algernon Moncrieff

Directed by Michael Attenborough (stage) and Michael Lindsay-Hogg (TV)

This production was broadcasted on US television in 1985 (when I recorded in on this VHS tape), and that is the date given in several references, but it was originally produced in 1981.

The actor (and manager) Geroge Alexander first presented this play with a one act curtain raiser by Langdon Mitchell. Wilde had submitted a four-act play, and was told to cut it down to three acts. He complied and most of the cutting involved folding the second and third acts into one--the second act as exits today.

Wilde's son Vyvyan reconstructed the original 4-act version in 1957, (it survived in a German translation and from copies of Wilde's early drafts--and offered many more opportunities for the actors to eat on stage).

Some excellent stuff got cut! here's a bit:

Cecily: ....Miss Prism and I lunch at 2 off some roast mutton.

Algernon: I fear that would be too rich for me.

Cecily: Uncle Jack, whose health has been sadly undermined by the late hours you keep in town, has been ordered by his London doctor to have 'pâté-de-foie-gras' sandwiches and 1874 champagne at 12. I don't know if such invalid's fare would suit you.

Algernon: You sure the champagne is '74?

Cecily: Poor Uncle Jack has not been allowed to drink anything else for the last two years. Even the cheaper clarets are, he tells me, strictly forbidden to him.