by Rita Charleston

A beautiful, wealthy, American woman travels to England seeking to marry a titled aristocrat. Playwright Oscar Wilde employs this deceptively simple premise to mock British society, as well as the Englishness of the English. In “A Woman of No Importance,” completing its long run March 1 at the Walnut Street Theatre, Wilde holds  up an unfiltered mirror to the bourgeois life of Victorian England while extolling the virtues of robust American values.

Walnut Producing Artistic Director Bernard Havard directs the cast, which includes Germantown resident Jessica Bedford who returns to the Walnut stage to play Lady Stutfield. In describing the show, Bedford said it starts out as a frothy, light, off-the-wall comedy. “And then it turns into a societal critique, which was quite forward-thinking at the time Wilde wrote the piece. He was really asking the society in which he lived whether their treatment of women was fair, and making the case for them to think that question through.”

(Oscar Wilde, 1854-1900, was a brilliant, extremely witty Irish poet and playwright who became one of the most popular playwrights in London. He is best remembered for his epigrams and plays, particularly “The Importance of Being Earnest,” his novel “The Picture of Dorian Gray” and the circumstances of his criminal conviction for "gross indecency," imprisonment, and early death at age 46.)

Her character, Bedford continued, “is a single lady of means, very much interested in how to track down a man. She's not the brightest candle on the cake.As I read through my lines at first, I thought how did her mind go there? But actually it's a freeing challenge to play someone different from yourself and to walk along in someone else's shoes.”

Bedford, who has acted in many productions and on many stages throughout the area, enjoys teaching her craft as well. Aside from teaching at the Walnut, she has also taught at Montgomery County Community College, Villanova University,Temple University, University of the Arts and others.

Bedford grew up in Linglestown, Pa., outside of Harrisburg. She graduated from DeSales University, majoring in acting and directing, and then went off toVillanova University to do graduate work in theater, which brought her to Philadelphia. Bedford and her husband, actor Sean Close, have lived in Germantown for just about one year, and while they could have lived anywhere, they picked Northwest Philadelphia because of several reasons.

“First of all,” Bedford explained, “I liked the diversity of the area. I liked the historic nature of the neighborhood. We were very attracted to the area and just love our neighbors. Germantown is a real community, and the people here are truly invested in their community as well as in each other. And to tell the truth, we absolutely fell in love with our sweet little townhouse, and that kind of sealed the deal.”

Bedford said she also chose to live in Germantown because of what she calls “a tree quota. I grew up in a smaller town at the foot of the Blue Mountain in the Appalachian chain. So as much as I love Philadelphia and wanted to be a part of this community, I needed my tree quota met. And it's incredible that here in Germantown I can walk among these parks and tree-lined streets. It's an incredible experience. And would you believe that in the summertime, with the windows open, the dominant sound we hear at night are the crickets? Here we are in the city enjoying the sound of crickets. Amazing.”

For ticket information: 215-574-3550 or visit www.WalnutStreetTheatre.org