Where can I see 'The Importance of Being Earnest'?

A play produced in London, England, on Valentine’s Day in 1895 will be staged next month in Port Coquitlam.

And the Victorian comedy by Oscar Wilde is as relevant today as it was 130 years ago, the show’s director Charles Harris said this week.

Students from Archbishop Carney Regional Secondary will mount the high-society critique The Importance of Being Earnest at the Terry Fox Theatre (1260 Riverwood Gate, Port Coquitlam) from March 6 to 8, 2025.

“It’s my favourite play,” Harris told the Tri-City News on Feb. 11 at the Dominion Avenue high school. “I finally had the right cast to do it and it’s been a lot of fun to rehearse.”

The play follows the characters John “Jack” Worthing, played by Valen Peyton, 17, and his friend Algernon Moncrieff, portrayed by fellow Grade 12 student Joel Renaud, as they lead double lives.

Avoiding social obligations, the pair take on the name of a man called “Earnest” to seduce two women: Cecily, played by Alicia Malelang, and Gwendolen, portrayed by Keira Haley, also a Grade 11 student.

Last September, Harris auditioned and chose his cast of eight actors who have since rehearsed the “Trivial Comedy for Serious People,” as the play is subtitled, outside of school hours and without curriculum credit.

For Peyton and Renaud, both students said they wanted meaty roles to end their senior school year.

Renaud, 17, who took on Pinocchio in Carney’s Shrek musical last year, plans to study computer science at the University of Toronto in September while Peyton will continue his work in TV and film (last year, he appeared in a Petro-Canada commercial during the Super Bowl football game; his credits also include The Baby-Sitters Club and Resident Alien).

Harris said the cast researched their century-old roles by studying characters in the modern TV series Downton Abbey and Schitt’s Creek — namely Mary, and Alexis and Moira.

Michaela Smith said she relishes her role as Lady Bracknell, the mother of Gwendolen Fairfax. “She’s judgmental, but she takes the world with a grain of salt,” said Smith, a Grade 12 student who is in her first theatrical part at Carney.

As for Gwendolen, “She’s high class and knows what she wants, but she believes she’s way smarter than what she really is,” said Haley, a longtime musical theatre student at Coquitlam’s Lindbjerg Academy of Performing Arts.

Stage managed by Hailey Marlowe and Alexander Evdokimenko, The Importance of Being Earnest offers some political jabs about Britain at the turn of the century, but Harris said the school isn’t leaning into references given today's volatile climate.

Rather, “it’s more of a critique of manners and a satire of the one per cent in our society. We haven’t made a lot of changes to the script,” Harris said.

Tickets for The Importance of Being Earnest are $18 via the Archbishop Carney Regional Secondary website. Meanwhile, the Tri-City News is giving away two tickets for the March 7, 2025, show. To win tickets, tell us if you’ve seen the play before and where, and what you think about the comedy. Email [email protected] by Friday, Feb. 21 to qualify. The winner will be chosen at random.

The Carney cast of The Importance of Being Earnest: