THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST PITTSBURGH PUBLIC THEATRE & BALTIMORE CENTER STAGE | written by Oscar Wilde, adapted & directed by Jenny Koons. set designer: Jason Ardizzone-West; associate set designer: Emma Antenen; studio associate set designer: Sean Sanford; assistant set designer: Marissa Todd, Laura Valenti; costume designer: Hugh Hanson; wig designer: Kathy Mathews; lighting designer: Annmarie Duggan; sound designer: Uptown Works (Daniela Hart, Bailey Trierweiler, Noel Nichols); stage manager: Natalie Hratko; cast: Veronica del Cerro, Paul Deo Jr, Susan Lynskey, Alex Manalo, Joseph McGranaghan, Dylan Marquis Meyers, David Ryan Smith; technical director: Rob McLeod; properties head: Gay Kahkonen; properties coordinator: Kelly Yann; head stage carpenter: Mikey Abate; charge scenic artist: Celeste Parrendo. Photographs by Jason Ardizzone-West, unless otherwise noted.

PRESS

DC THEATER ARTS REVIEW
”The design team smartly lets the wordplay take center stage. Jason Ardizzone-West’s stately scenic design features a pastoral backdrop with an ostentatiously fake door just off-center. With hidden entrances and exits throughout the back wall, the space is not utilized in the way you may originally imagine — lending beautifully to the idea that nothing is truly as it seems on first glance. Hugh Hanson’s costumes are to die for, beautifully crafted and vibrant. Particular attention must be paid to Lady Bracknell’s larger-than-life silhouettes, including her period hats that would fit in nicely at the next Kentucky Derby.”
https://dctheaterarts.org/2024/05/13/the-comedy-is-classic-in-importance-of-being-earnest-at-baltimore-center-stage/

MD THEATRE GUIDE REVIEW
UptownWorks (sound design) plays pre-show and intermission classical piano music to set the mood. Scenic designer Jason Ardizzone-West has provided a simple but effective set—a huge two-story flat representing the outside of the London house and the estate with a pond and garden painted in the background. The flat has two doorways on the stage level. Two windows on the upper level provide the ladies opportunity to observe and comment upon the action of their suitors in the estate’s garden below. White Victorian furniture (tables, chairs, tea and serving carts) indicate the inside rooms. Audience seating is provided on either side of the stage as well as in front of the proscenium in Center Stage’s Head Theatre. Kathy Mathews (wig designer) and Hugh Hanson (costume designer) have done a terrific job with the period look. Especially outstanding were the dark, stiff, and foreboding dresses of Lady Bracknell and her imperious wig and hats. Her outfits were as fearful as her character. Annmarie Duggan’s lighting design was very atmospheric, especially in the closing sequence after the last line of dialogue, as the three couples dance a few steps and move into a “clinch” before exiting upstage as Lady Bracknell nods approval.
https://mdtheatreguide.com/2024/05/theatre-review-the-importance-of-being-earnest-at-baltimore-center-stage/

PITTSBURGH QUARTERLY REVIEW
Jason Ardizzone-West’s set somehow manages to evoke elements of both Fellini’s “Juliet of the Spirits” and Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In “Joke Wall,” in which characters pop out of trap doors – in this case, windows – to deliver dialogue.  It’s strange, it’s minimalist, and it certainly works, but the spare, reflective stage surfaces amplify the already loud delivery of the characters, which surely would have been dampened by the abundance of furniture historically found in Victorian rooms.
Hugh Hanson’s costumes are rich and impeccable, as if to offset the starkness of the settings.  Annmarie Duggan designed the unusually effulgent lighting, and Uptownworks achieved a high level of sonic clarity through microphones placed unobtrusively on the actors.
https://pittsburghquarterly.com/articles/pittsburgh-public-theaters-the-importance-of-being-earnest-a-sincerely-funny-play/

THEATRE BLOOM REVIEW
Scenic Designer Jason Ardizzone-West (accompanied by associate scenic designers Emma Antenen and Sean Sanford) create a deceptively simple wall-tower that serves as the show’s only scenery, creating for a vastly open play space, which well-serves the movements of the actors throughout the performance. Ardizzone-West’s two-tier wall construct is painted in muted colors to look like scenery that could earnestly come out of any Oscar Wilde story (and beyond that, something more akin an illustration of a Jane Austen novel.) But the mesmerizing characteristic of Ardizzone-West’s lovely painted wall is the hidden doorways and window-openings, which aren’t fully revealed until the second scene— where the three lower doors are obscured with faux foliage to create the illusion of being out in the garden— and then in the second act, where we have three doors on the lower tier open and the three windows on the upper tier in full occupation of people and…flying books. Complimenting Ardizzone-West’s work is that of Lighting Designer Annmarie Duggan (assistant Joe Borsch) and the sound/music design of Uptownworks (assistant Rebecca Satzberg.) Duggan’s subtle and at times very subdued use of lighting creates just the right atmosphere for romance and comedy and the additional, classical music— particularly for the final, dialogue-less scene— balances the overall nature and verve of the production sublimely. There’s also a rare opportunity to experience said set from on-stage (two smaller seating banks flank the far left and right of the play-space respectively, giving certain ticket-holders the option to be quite close to the action as it unfolds!)
http://www.theatrebloom.com/2024/05/the-importance-of-being-earnest-at-baltimore-center-stage/