mlbroberts

You can see this production on YouTube currently. It is a video of the stage production. I have seen several productions of Earnest, but this one is the best, largely because Brian Bedford makes the most perfect Lady Bracknell I've seen, so delightfully vacuous and full of Victorian upper class foolishness, but also because the rest of the cast is first rate too. Fontina and Burr are particularly wonderful as Algernon and Earnest/John, each of them trying to get away with and "kill off" their fictitious scapegoats while hopelessly in love with two young women who each absolutely have to have a lover named Earnest. One of the best comedies in the English language, beautifully done.

We needed an episode that dealt with Victoria accepting Heath, which meant she had to confront her late husband's infidelity, but this one seemed forced to me. It's more than 6 years after Tom Barkley's death, and the town is just now erecting a monument to him? OK, they took an excuse to get Heath into his father's boots literally (his brothers' all had feet that were too big), and they used Heath's reluctance to wear them as a means of getting Victoria to go look for the truth, but the boots, Heath's surly attitude, Victoria taking off alone when the ceremony for her husband is happening? Too much of a sledgehammer plot for me.