BY CHRISTOPHER POTTER
News Arts Writer

"No," replied Wilde. "It must be like a pistol shot."

Given the veracity of Wilde's assertion in his 1895 masterpiece "The Importance of Being Earnest," a play that often moves at warp speed despite its characters' ironic fondness for overly articulated prose, one awaits Ann Arbor Civic Theatre's Lydia Mendelssohn revival Thursday with the utmost anticipation - plus an unavoidable touch of trepidation.

For this will be the four-act version of the play often dubbed the greatest comedy ever written. It's Wilde's preferred version, the "Earnest" he originally intended for the stage before he was browbeaten by producer/actor/theater owner George Alexander into shortening "the best (play) I have ever written" (as Wilde described it) into the three-act comedy known and embraced down to the present day.

"The irony is, the play we all know wasn't the version Wilde wanted produced," says director Wendy Wright, who gained the rights for Civic to perform the script presented (and somewhat reworked) by Canada's Stratford Festival during its 2000 season.

What remains to be seen is whether Wilde's definitive "Importance of Being Earnest" is in fact an improvement upon the universally loved, hilariously straight-faced three-act show. British theater scholar Katharine Worth suggested "how far from carelessly Wilde made his revisions, and indeed how much the (four-act) play is improved by rigorous cutting which gives it a more spare and modern look" - a view echoed by many Canadian critics three summers ago.

Other Wilde admirers have long mourned the elimination of an entire act from a comedy so inspired that its influence upon 20th century absurdist/

post-absurdist playwrighting is acknowledged fact. (Tom Stoppard once said his ultimate aim was to write a play as good as "Earnest"). In cutting his play begrudgingly - he needed the money - Wilde eliminated two characters entirely: Jack Worthing's gardener Moulton, and, more crucially, his solicitor Mr. Gribsby, said to be one of the most hilarious of all Wilde's characters. In addition, the play's existent roles were reduced; even male co-protagonist Algernon Montford (his pre-Moncrieff moniker) suffered some loss.

Only Jack - who, tellingly, was played by producer Alexander - not only maintained his prominence but was lent a more masculine sheen contrasting his original image as a London Victorian dandy commensurate with friend Algy.

What Wildesque irony: "The Importance of Being Earnest," often heralded as the perfect comedy, resides in a form that's likely far from what its creator intended. Wright certainly thinks so: "The characters are much more well-rounded. The political commentary is much more pointed.

"The Stratford is sort of the perfect script. What they have done is take the best of the three-act and the four-act, and also went back to the original handwritten manuscript by Wilde, and added lines Wilde had omitted before he first submitted the play. This is essentially the definitive version of the script."

Of course, back in 1895 Wilde was hardly in position to salvage the original "Earnest," given the sudden collapse of his own world -social condemnation and a prison term for his homosexuality beckoned - mere days after the play opened to tumultuous praise. All but forgotten, the four-act show languished for more than half a century until an original 1894 script was found by the New York Public Library following a purchase of Wilde papers in the mid-1950s. And even then it would be another 40 years before the "Earnest" of Wilde's desires was performed, in 1985 at John Carroll University in Cleveland. Stratford's 2000 rendering was the first professional production.

According to Wright, Ann Arbor Civic aggressively forged a Michigan premiere. "Stratford told us we could perform their version if we could get permission from Wilde's grandson Merlin Holland in England. We wrote him and got a nice letter back saying we could do it.".

"The show is a sex farce," Wright says, "and we are taking that to the nth degree. I'm going to push that envelope. Matt Phenix (who plays Lady Brancaster) is doing a wonderful job. He's done a lot of theater, but hasn't been on stage in 10 years.