This audio collection contains full-cast presentations of four of Wilde’s plays and an adaptation of his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. Overall, I enjoyed the collection and thought it was a fun read/listen.

The audiobook begins with a full-cast reading of A Woman of No Importance, a Wilde play with which I had no previous familiarity. At its heart, this play concerns a woman and a man who had an illegitimate son many years ago and after years of never seeing each other, they randomly bump into each other at a social gathering. Of the four plays presented here, this one was the only one to lean a little more toward the melodramatic than the comedic. (For some reason, I kept being reminded of James A. Herne’s Margaret Fleming.) Because I was less knowledgeable about this one and there was a large cast of characters, I actually had to go back to the beginning after getting about 15-20 minutes in so that I could get a better grip on who was who in the play. Not having stage directions nor the visual cues of different actors/costumes, I found it was a little bit difficult at first to keep track when all the various characters were introduced. Once I had that sorted out, I rather enjoyed this play, although as I already noted it was a bit atypical for Wilde in terms of the comedy. That being said though, it did have one the best final lines I’ve heard and other bits of wit dropped here and there. Also, some of the play’s underlying themes are quite similar to other Wilde plays; for instance, secrets that haunt a character’s chances of happiness and mockery of the upper classes are both featured heavily here as they are in other works by Wilde. It touches on important issues of the day (and indeed, ones that are still contemporary), such as gendered double standards. With a wide cast of characters, some are unfortunately more one-dimensional than others, but I quite liked the title character, who made the play that much more interesting.

The next play presented was An Ideal Husband, which I had never read or seen before, although I had previously watched the 1999 movie version and enjoyed that. Lady Chiltern believes she has an ideal upright husband who abides by the same high moral conduct code that she does. When Mrs. Cheveley, an old schoolmate of Lady Chiltern’s who represents all she dislikes, arrives on the scene, however, a variety of things emerge about the Chilterns and their close circle of friends. This play is a bit complicated, with a variety of secrets, blackmailing, and misunderstandings making it a comedy of errors almost in the style of Shakespearean comedies. There are obviously serious issues underlying all this comedy though – including corruption in politics, the marriage state, and the status of women vs. men at the time. The characters all seem to be caricatures at first but as the play progresses, we learn that there is more to each character than appears on the surface. So even while this play is entertaining and funny, there’s more to digest after you’ve had your laugh. This is now one of my favorite plays by Wilde, and I’d definitely listen to, read, or see it again – or perhaps all three over time.

The next play in the bunch is Lady Windermere’s Fan, which I first (and last) read a good 12 years ago; I liked it the first time and enjoyed it again here. This was Wilde’s first play after turning from tragedies to comedies, and there are still certainly some underlying tragic themes, although ultimately all’s well that ends well. Lady Windermere believes that her husband is cheating on her with a woman named Mrs. Erlynne and is mortified when he invites this woman to their home for Lady Windermere’s birthday ball. We soon learn, however, that there are skeletons in Lady Windermere’s closest, so to speak, and her Puritanical views are hypocritical at best. Once again, Wilde skewers the upper class and the state of matrimony through secret identities and mishaps based on partial information. This play doesn’t have quite as many witty one-liners as some of the others, but it’s a thoroughly entertaining romp. Having read it twice now in one fashion or another, I’d like to see this one performed and note how it plays out live on stage.

The final play collected here is The Importance of Being Earnest, which is probably Wilde’s best known play. Two men are in love with two different women who each believe their beau to be named Ernest; problem is that there’s actually no Ernest at all but rather one identity created and shared to allow the men to protect their reputations while getting up to mischief. I’d read this before more than a decade ago and saw the 2002 movie version about five years ago. While I had found it highly amusing on the first read, I was less enamored with it this time. It certainly is funny and has some of the wittiest one-liners and conversations out of the lot presented here. The mistaken identities trope is used again here with the greatest tongue in cheek and the precarious nature of the marriage state is the most obviously poked fun at here. But the characters here are all so ridiculously shallow and superficial with really no redeeming qualities about them that it gives the play a bit of a bad aftertaste. Whereas in the other three plays you wanted everything to work out well for at least one of the characters, here the happy ending is merely entertaining because of the convoluted route it took to get there; it’s not actually something you felt was necessary for these characters. (Although you could certainly argue that this play, despite the more absurd nature of it, perhaps most closely resembles real life in that the less than wonderful people still end up all right in the end.)

This collection is rounded out with an adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s only novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, which is well acted and seems to be well adapted as far as I can tell, having never read the original. While it seemed to cover all the major plot points (again, to the best of my knowledge), I still felt as though I was missing something. There were large parts of Dorian’s life that were clearly passed over, even acknowledged as such, and I’d like to have known more about that time period. There was some narration given here to make up for any points missed via dialogue, but it’s clearly not a novel for obvious reasons. Several of the lines in the dialogue were the same or slight re-workings of lines from Wilde’s plays; I don’t know if this is true in the source material also or if they were added in to make this more dramatic work a little lighter. At this point, I’d definitely like to try again with The Picture of Dorian Gray and get the unabridged version before making any kind of final assessment about it.

Overall, this was a fine production of several important works from Oscar Wilde; a variety of talented actors were employed, including some “big names” like Alfred Molina and Eric Stoltz, to create a rich listening experience. It’s not over the top, but there are some additional sound effects such as birds chirping and short musical interludes. In addition to all this, the collection includes a brief introduction to each play that puts it into some context historically and/or thematically. (However, at one point it’s noted that A Woman of No Importance was Wilde’s second play, when it was actually his fourth. It was, however, only his second comedic play, but that distinction is not made.) There’s also an interview with Wilde’s grandson, which provides some interesting details, especially regarding Wilde’s infamous trial and what he notes are popular misconceptions about Wilde. Altogether, I found this to be a highly entertaining collection and would recommend it for those who enjoy Oscar Wilde’s wit, witty one-liners in general, Victorian literature, drawing room theater, and/or comedic plays with mistaken identities, hidden pasts, and the lot. ( )

These were actual performances from a LA production. ( )