POST FALLS - The Jacklin Arts and Cultural Center is rolling out the theatrical experience.

The Post Falls nonprofit will host its first play - "The Importance of Being Earnest" - starting Thursday.

It will be performed at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 9, 7:30 p.m. Sept. 13 and Sept. 15 and 2 p.m. Sept. 16.

Tickets are $15 and $10 for students. Reservations can be made at 457-8950, art@thejacklincenter.org or www.thejacklincenter.org.

Patrons will have cucumber sandwiches, tea and crumpets in the JACC's Fireside Room, then settle in the Celebration Hall decorated as an English tea room with round tables.

"It will be a full experience," said Liisa Spink, JACC executive director.

The comedy by Oscar Wilde is about protagonists who maintain fictitious personae to escape burdensome social obligations in late Victorian London.

The play will be directed by Eric Paine, who has worked with the Lake City Playhouse and Spokane Civic Theater and owns a video production company.

"Even though the play was written more than 100 years ago, it's really timeless," Paine said. "It's a perfect fit for (the JACC) because it was built around the time when this play was first performed (in the late 1800s)."

The play is loaded with British wit and humor.

"And nobody is more witty than Oscar Wilde," Paine said. "I told the staff that the jokes in the show are not a mallet that you get hit over the head with; they are paper cuts."