Director Andrea Tate sets the top spinning in Camarillo Community Theatre's production of Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest," subtitled "A Trivial Comedy for Serious People." Tate's sophisticated mounting of the social satire encourages a cast of mostly familiar community actors to rise to the mannered style and deliver the laughs in Wilde's witty work.

A second crucial element is new-to-the-area Rafe Terrizzi, who adds refined skills in the central role of Algernon Moncrieff, the droll, upper-class Brit who lounges like a lizard with an agile tongue. Terrizzi whips out Wilde's cerebral and paradoxical words with clarity and deft timing, managing all that even while munching cucumber sandwiches throughout the opening scene.

Wilde, through his characters, pokes and prods British society of the late 19th century about its pretensions and class divisions. Joining Terrizzi in giving Wilde's words their due are two formidable women: Peggy Steketee as Lady Bracknell, Algernon's aunt, and Karen Sonnenschein as Miss Prism, governess to Cecily Cardew, the ward of John Worthing, who is Algernon's best friend and cohort in idle gamesmanship and musings.

Steketee is a booming Bracknell who keeps a little book on likely marital prospects for her daughter, Gwendolen, and becomes very stuffy indeed when she discovers a flaw in Worthing's somewhat blurred background. She is so imposing that when she thunders "Sit down!" to her daughter, Algernon and Cecily also respond with alacrity, as if the command were for everyone.

Sonnenschein is a taskmaster, but when the Rev. Canon Chasuble (Roscoe Gaines), a country neighbor, appears, she melts into a demure virgin, all flutters and smiles.

The central "plot" of the play is that there is no one named Earnest, or Ernest, only the two young men who for different reasons pretend to be Ernest, and are at least earnest. John has dreamed up a brother by that name, a black sheep of the family, handy for an excuse to leave any unpleasant or boring situation. Algernon pretends to be that brother, briefly, in order to meet Cecily. As luck, or Wilde, would have it, both young women have always dreamed of marrying someone by that name, and in turn are totally put off by "John" and "Algernon." The frivolity of all this fixation on names both highlights Wilde's theme and provides a key twist to the tale.

Playing the girlish women are Jennifer Carnahan as the genteel but determined Gwendolen, who may indeed grow up to be like her mother, as the men briefly contemplate; and Kristi Kellogg as the equally romantic Cecily, whose country upbringing away from the strictures of London society and a hectoring mother have left her a tad less formal but just as impetuous as her new acquaintance. Peter Krause, as John Worthing, rises to just the right level of confusion and celebration when his background is finally revealed.

All is worked out with hilarious coincidences and attitude adjustments that make the matches palatable to all.

— E-mail Rita Moran at ritamoran@earthlink.net.