Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde - (An Ideal Husband) Brit wit at its finest. Wilde is best known for his skill with epigrams, but if you look beyond them, at the entire structure of his plays, you find that his talents go a lot deeper. His characters are pragmatic, cheeky, clever, and romantic -- when it suits them. Clear moral, delightful language, extremely careful plot. Actually, everything Wilde writes has an extremely careful, well-planned plot. In An Ideal …

…emphatically was not. So accustomed was this syphilitic bisexual to the best of both worlds that his cautionary comedy An Ideal Husband managed to celebrate family values while simultaneously mocking the moralisers. Maureen Paton, London Daily Express, 1996. If this production is a golden treat, it is also a harsh expose of late-Victorian political corruption that can address itself quite without inhibition to the glorious 1990's, the golden decade of sleaze. John Peter, London Sunday Times, 1996.