John Worthing Critique

I chose to evaluate the acting of Jason Dormeyer, who played John Worthing. I want to say first of all that even though the main points mentioned in this paper will be negative, the performance of Jack was quite convincing and carried out very well.

The actor seemed very uptight whenever he was on stage. Luckily, being uptight works with the character of Jack. His jaw and his neck seemed to be tense during the performance. Jason’s voice, however, does not seem to suffer because of that. The fact that he is uptight tends to put me on edge in the audience. I started to feel less comfortable and get somewhat tense because of this.

Jason rushes too much. He needs to slow down and enunciate more to make his lines more audible. I don’t want him to lose any of the energy that he has, but I do wish that he would take more time to give more clarity to the words. A good example of this is the way that the line, “…while I’m in this horrible trouble,” is rushed trough. I believe that the line is in the second act during the muffin scene. It was not hard to figure out what was being said, but it did take more effort to understand.

The clarity of Jack’s relationships was good. Jack and Algernon were definitely friends that have known each other for a while. They were comfortable enough with each other to argue and tell faults, while knowing that they would still remain friends. Jack was also very clear on his relationship with Gwendolyn. She was obviously of romantic interest with him because of the way he saw to her every need. A good example is when she first walks in and Jack says, “you are quite perfect Miss Fairfax.” This is also displayed well when Jack fills Gwendolyn’s teacup. He jumps up with great haste when she hands the cup to him. I was confused on the relationship with Lady Bracknell, though. She was clearly Jacks superior, yet Jack acted somewhat indifferent and overconfident while talking to her about his childhood and social standing. I felt that he could have been reminded of his social standing at times like the “Good morning!” line. Jack is trying to obtain consent to marry her daughter.

The age of John Worthing was very consistent throughout the play.