An Ideal Husband - Stagetext (Mold) November 4, 2006

An Ideal Husband

Genre: Drama
Playwright: Oscar Wilde

"It is not the perfect, but the imperfect, who have need of love….Women think they are making ideals of men. What they are making of us are false idols merely."

At 40, Sir Robert Chiltern is already a pillar of London society; handsome,wealthy, happily married to a beautiful woman and a popular government minister with a brilliant future.

When he meets Mrs Cheveley, a beauty with a past who comes to threaten the present, at a dinner party hosted by his wife, she attempts to blackmail him with a compromising letter. It contains a dark secret from his youth, on which his wealth and power are based.

Should he comply with her demand to deceive the House in exchange for the return of the letter, and so preserve an unblemished reputation in his public and private life or must he risk both his marriage and career for the sake of the truth.

In An Ideal Husband Oscar Wilde, with sparkling wit and piercing observation, exposes social and political hypocrisy, examines the illusions men and women have about marriage and asks if it is possible to find perfection in love.

Directed by the BAFTA award-winning director Christopher Morahan, following his successful productions of Hay Fever and Present Laughter at Clwyd Theatr Cymru.