Things aren’t what they seem in 'Earnest'

• By ROBIN MILLER
• arts writer
• Published: Nov 16, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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Playing the bad guy isn’t so bad, that is, if you can label Lady Augusta Bracknell a bad guy.

And you really can’t, because there aren’t any bad guys or good guys in Oscar Wilde’s play The Importance of Being Earnest.
There’s just, well, the nice and the snobby.

And Lady Bracknell happens to be the snobbiest. Which makes her the most fun to play.

Bashirah Perine thinks so, anyway.

“Oh, she’s great to play,” she said. “Lady Bracknell is very proper, very uppity — she kind of looks down her nose at everyone. I’m a very warm person, and Lady Bracknell is a cold person, so it’s fun to play someone who is opposite in personality.”

Perine laughs. She can’t help it. Some of Lady Bracknell’s mannerisms remind her of one of her professors in the Visual and Performing Arts Department. Oh, not in a bad way, but in smooth, cool manner.

Perine’s professor is unshakeable.

“She never lets anything get to her,” Perine said.

And when Perine and her classmates get wound up about something, this professor remains steadfast.

“I think of that when I think of Lady Bracknell,” Perine said. “Lady Bracknell never lets anything shake her.”

Perine will take the stage in a few moments for Act III of Southern University’s production of The Importance of Being Earnest. This day’s rehearsal is dedicated to a run-through without having to refer to the book.

In other words, everyone should know their lines by now. Well, everyone but A.J. Romero. He stepped in the part of Algernon a few days before when another actor dropped out. This is only his third rehearsal.

“And he’s doing quite well,” Aileen Hendricks said.