The Theater: Old Play in Manhattan, Mar. 17, 1947

The Importance of Being Earnest (by Oscar Wilde; produced by the Theatre Guild & John C. Wilson in association with H. M. Tennent, Ltd.) brings John Gielgud back to Broadway for the first time since his Hamlet in 1936. In the interim, the 42-year-old Englishman has played Hamlet at Elsinore, offered British playgoers a cavalcade of the classics, given London a repertory company to rival the Old Vic. For his present visit, Gielgud apparently questioned the importance of being earnest: he would frivol first in Wilde's classic farce, later in Congreve's Restoration comedy,...

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