L'Importance d'Etre Constant (01.03.07)

Last night, I was invited to see an ancient comedy called L'Importance d'Etre Constant (The Importance of Being Ernest) from a British author, Oscar Wilde . Although I did not know much about the play and the author, not to mention the actors, I had been excited to see it and compelled to brave my French. (Needless to say, the play was in French.)

I was the only non-French person in the group (11 of us from the project team). Some offered themselves to be my interpreter. Luckily, hours before the play, I had a chance to read the plot summary in English from Wikipedia. This really helped. At least, I grabbed the general idea of the storyline. The rest was a matter of relying on my listening skills.

I won't write the synopsis of the play here, because you can read it from Wikipedia link above. En general, c'etais une bonne experience de degouter le gout Francais. It was my first time entering a theatre in France. The experience was overwhelming. Although Le Theatre Antoine in Boulevard de Strasbourg was pretty small compared to what I have seen in London, for example, yet the interior still impressed me. Rennaissance style. Looked pretty ancient. Not sure when it was built, but I could imagine the French has successfully preserved one of their lifestyles from generation to generation. Theatre has been part of their lives since God knows when, even last night you could easily spot many youngsters amongst the spectators.

During the play, I of course missed half of the dialogues, particularly when they spoke too fast or when the phrases were too foreign to my ears or too French, to say the least. And of course, there were times when I missed the laughters. Fortunately, in a play like this, the lights are always down. Hence, no one will see you when you are frown, whilst the others laugh out loud. But still, they can hear you laugh when the others not. In this case, they might have thought you were weird or something. Nevertheless, the good thing is I did not miss half of the dialogue, which means I could understand the jokes and laughed when the people laughed, particularly during the last act (of out 3).

Not only was the play funny, but also it was unique in a sense that it was written with a very rich English flavours in it (the setting was in England during the Victoria era), but the French interpretation brilliantly blends the two different poles into one superb script. For us, the spectators, we found it funny whenever the actors were repeatedly saying "bunburying" in a very obvious French accent.

Overall, the night was brilliant. One more enrichment in my life experience.