From Director Fontaine Syer

Why should we pay attention to Oscar Wilde’s play about  the morality of politicians in the Victorian era? It was over a century ago, the clothes they wore seem to us both precious and preposterous, and their ideas of how men and women should conduct themselves could not be further from the world we live in today. Well, we pay attention because humans just haven’t changed that much in a little more than 100 years.

Politicians still sell state secrets, people still try to take advantage of those situations,  and marriages still fall apart because someone crosses one of the invisible but undeniable lines. And we still struggle with the disturbing question of whether a sin of our youth  must be paid for with our life’s blood.

And then there is the power of wit. Oscar Wilde’s wit, to be precise. Wilde was a talented and complex man, living several lives simultaneously:a fashion-setting bon vivant, a witty, intelligent writer, a popular lecturer, and a bi-sexual man in a world where approved sex was a marital obligation and all other sex was illicit, sinful, and illegal. Wilde married Constance Lloyd, fathered 2 children, but ultimately fell in love with Alfred, Lord Douglas, known affectionately as Bosie. Finally, Wilde’s behavior became too overt for Victorian sensibilities, and he was arrested and tried for homosexual acts. He was convicted and sentenced to two years hard labor. After his jail time, he published The Ballad of Reading Gaol, but his writing never again reached the heights of his greatest creative period.

But his wit and perspective remain in the plays, poems, and stories he wrote before his arrest.  Wilde was famous in his time for his quick, sassy sayings and his incisive perceptions and observations on human behavior. He understood human foibles, and rather than condemn them, he accepted them as signs of humanity and great sources of humor.

Robert Chiltern’s foible in AN IDEAL HUSBAND is a serious crime. As a young man, he sold a state secret for personal profit. Since that crime, his behavior has been exemplary, a blazing star of intelligence and honor, bringing – as his wife says – “a nobler atmosphere, a finer attitude towards life, a freer air of purer aims and higher ideals” into the political life of the time. Should all that be destroyed because of one dishonorable act when he was 22 years old? Oscar Wilde clearly has his own opinion on the subject. And if we pay attention, we’ll have the chance to decide what we think.   

With some clever laughs along the way.

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