[NEohioPAL] Review of "A Woman of No Importance" at the Shaw Festival

[Bob Abelman via NEohioPAL]

Shaw Festival’s ‘A Woman of No Importance’ undermined by its updating



Bob Abelman

Cleveland Jewish News, The News Herald, The Morning Journal

Member, International Association of Theatre Critics



No, Oscar Wilde’s “A Woman of No Importance” is not the best of the four society comedies he wrote between 1891 and 1895.



It’s been said that while “Lady Windermere’s Fan,” “An Ideal Husband” and “The Importance of Being Earnest” swim in melodrama, this one fails to come up for air.  



And while Wilde's plays typically offer a handful of likable characters, this one has none and everyone’s lines are lessons on conventional Victorian morality.  



But no play better chronicles the pleasure of belonging to the best of high society and the pain of being cast from it, which evocatively reflects the public shaming Wilde was experiencing while this play was in performance at London’s West End.



Being found guilty of subversiveness and sodomy destroyed Wilde’s career – a career that too quickly went from poetry to prose to prison – and, ultimately, destroyed the playwright himself.  



But not before he penned this portrait of the shame of an unwed mother desperately trying to conceal the truth from her son and an unforgiving society.



For more of this review, go to www.clevelandjewishnews.com/columnists/. 
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