Actor Highlights

Brian Bedford in The Importance of Being Earnest

"Within seconds of sweeping onstage, and with a wordless gesture as funny as it is subtle, the great actor Brian Bedford proves beyond question that gender is of no importance whatsoever in portraying the imposing Lady Bracknell in Oscar Wilde’s greatest comedy, The Importance of Being Earnest.  Mr. Bedford is aware that when portrayed with the seriousness of purpose that she deserves — or should I say demands? — Lady Bracknell is more than capable of keeping an audience breathless with laughter."   Charles Isherwood, NY Times

It is not necessarily rare for actors — male actors, that is — to take on the role of Wilde’s arch parody of a paragon of high Victorian propriety.   But Mr. Bedford is truly playing the role, not working a gimmick.

A classical actor particularly celebrated for his performances of Shakespeare and Molière, he is a versatile, conscientious stylist who has no interest in winning laughs by winking references to the gender switch.  Bedford attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London from 1952–1954 and was in the same class as Albert Finney, Alan Bates and Peter O'Toole.

Primarily a stage actor, he is known for his English-speaking interpretations of the French playwright Molière, (one of my all time favorite playwrites!) including Tony Award nominated performances in Tartuffe, The Molière Comedies (a double bill of the short plays The School for Husbands and The Imaginary Cuckold) and The School for Wives, for which he received the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play. He has done a great deal of Shakespearean work, notably as Ariel in The Tempest opposite John Gielgud'sProspero in 1958, Angelo in Measure for Measure at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in 1975 and 1976, and The Public Theater's New York Shakespeare Festival Shakespeare in the Park productions of As You Like It (as Orlando), and Timon of Athens (as Timon), the latter based on a production he originated with the National Actors Theatre in 1993 and which he eventually played on Broadway.

To impersonate a member of the opposite sex, Bedford took his cue from one of the all-time great drag performers – Barry Humphries, a.k.a. Dame Edna Everage. "I realized I had to be as utterly convincing as Lady Bracknell as Barry Humphries is with Dame Edna," he says. "Of course, you know it's Humphries you're watching, but you don't think about that – you're just absolutely flabbergasted and absorbed by this crazy woman that he's giving you. I thought how important that was: there mustn't be any hint of a man playing a woman."

Bedford says, of all Wilde's writings, he likes the letters best. He finds them more revealing of the man than his literary endeavours. "Oscar did say, 'I put my genius into my life and my talent into my work.'"
The exception, perhaps, is The Importance of Being Earnest. "Somehow we're getting the genius that he put into his life, in this play," he says. "It's Oscar himself."
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/arts/theatre/story/2009/06/01/f-brian-bedford-stratford-importance-of-being-earnest.html#ixzz1B1gNr8RC

The Importance of Being Earnest runs to Oct. 30; Ever Yours, Oscar runs June 19-Aug. 29, at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Ontario.