Much of the four acts of An Ideal Husband, a serious comedy, is constructed out of flip one-liners, most of which remain, though Parker has added a few, all unworthy of the master (including one about the proverbial frying pan and the fire). This doesn’t mean that Parker should have adapted Wilde instead of Oscar. Wilde, the more serious author of the brilliant “The Critic as Artist,” an essay in the form of a dialogue, is never allowed to be much of anything. I don’t mean to imply that Oscar isn’t a witty and entertaining fellow indeed, he’s so much of one under Parker’s guidance that he’s never allowed to be anything else for long. In Connolly’s terms, it was a bit like going from Oscar to Oscar plus Wilde and then back to Oscar again. I’ve seen An Ideal Husband, writer-director Oliver Parker’s adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s 1895 play, twice - once before reading the original and once after. The poor can think of nothing else.‘”Ĭonnolly goes on to explain, “ When I think of ‘Oscar,’ it is against a background of servants, of butlers announcing him and footmen with salvers, of a hansom cab hired by the day, the driver nodding under his tarpaulin while Wilde and Bosie display far into the night.” ‘There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor.

In some cases he is both: thus The Soul of Man Under Socialism in places seems almost inspired it is a breath of fresh air in which the idealistic aspects of Socialism (or Christian Democracy) have seldom been so well expressed - in his denunciation of private property for example. “ Wilde is Wilde in these essays and seldom ‘Oscar,'” Connolly noted with justifiable admiration. Reviewing a collection of Oscar Wilde’s critical writings almost 30 years ago, Cyril Connolly made a useful distinction between “Wilde” and “Oscar,” the two sides of the same man. With Cate Blanchett, Minnie Driver, Rupert Everett, Julianne Moore, Jeremy Northam, John Wood, Lindsay Duncan, Peter Vaughan, and Jeroen Krabbe.

An husband play by oscar wilde