Brian Bedford to Direct and Star in The Importance of Being Earnest on Broadway

The Roundabout Theatre Company will present Brian Bedford’s production of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, starring Bedford as Lady Bracknell, at the American Airlines Theatre in the winter of 2011. The production began life at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in 2009 and, according to Roundabout artistic director Todd Haimes, many of the cast members from that mounting will appear in the Broadway production. Casting and creative team members will be announced shortly.

The Importance of Being Earnest is a glorious comedy of mistaken identity, which ridicules codes of propriety and etiquette. Dashing men-about-town John Worthing and Algernon Moncrieff pursue fair ladies Gwendolen Fairfax and Cecily Cardew. Matters are complicated by the imaginary characters invented by both men to cover their on-the-sly activities—not to mention the disapproval of Gwendolen’s mother, the formidable Lady Bracknell. The play, which premiered in 1895 at the St. James Theatre in London, offers a stinging critique of love, sex and social hypocrisy that remains relevant today.

“Producing first-class revivals of classic plays is a huge component of Roundabout’s mission—and in fact was the institution’s founding principle,” Haimes said in a statement. “Unintentionally, we’ve never touched on the work of Oscar Wilde before, but I believe that his plays are as essential a part of the canon as those of Shaw or Ibsen or others who we’ve presented on a more consistent basis. When I saw Brian Bedford’s Earnest at Stratford, I immediately knew that this was the kind of production that can absolutely revitalize a classic play.”

Bedford has appeared in Roundabout productions of Tartuffe, London Assurance and The Moliere Comedies, all of which earned him Tony nominations. He won the Best Actor Tony in 1971 for The School for Wives and was also nominated for Tonys for Two Shakespearean Actors and Timon of Athens. Other notable New York productions include The Misanthrope, Private Lives, Jumpers and The Cocktail Party. His one-man Shakespeare show The Lunatic, the Lover and the Poet and his Oscar Wilde evening Ever Yours, Oscar have taken him around the world.