Nicholai La Barrie’s contemporary, all-Black production of Oscar Wilde’s political comedy wins praise for its energy, style and an outstanding central ensemble, but divides critics on whether its visual exuberance serves or overwhelms the play beneath.
Directed by the Lyric Hammersmith’s Associate Director Nicholai La Barrie and marking exactly 100 years since the play last appeared at the venue, this bold reimagining of An Ideal Husband transplants Wilde’s 1895 satire into modern-day London, with an all-Black cast, a pulsing contemporary soundtrack (in which Soul II Soul and Corinne Bailey Rae make an appearance) and lavish costumes by Rajha Shakiry.
Starring Jamael Westman (Hamilton, The White Devil, Torn, The Essex Serpent) as the dandyish Lord Goring, Chiké Okonkwo (La Brea, Julius Caesar, All My Sons, The Birth of a Nation, His Dark Materials) as the embattled Sir Robert Chiltern, Tamara Lawrance (Get Millie Black, The Silent Twins, Time, Twelfth Night, Small Axe) as Lady Chiltern, Aurora Perrineau (KAOS, Westworld, When They See Us) as the scheming Mrs Cheveley and Tiwa Lade (Hard Truths, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, A Midsummer Night’s Dream), the production has earned warm admiration for its performances and theatricality.
While some critics feel it occasionally prioritises spectacle over substance, the consensus is that it’s a fun, vibrant and often thrilling evening that’s very much alive.
The verdict: A stylish, spirited revival with a standout ensemble: not quite firing on all cylinders, but rarely less than entertaining.
Critic’s Comparison
| Publication | Rating | The Key Takeaway |
| The Stage | ★★★★ | A superbly assured production: contemporary, physical and “provocatively entertaining” |
| The Guardian | ★★★★ | A celebration of queerness worthy of Oscar Wilde; great modernising touches. |
| Time Out | ★★★ | Enjoyable and stylish, but the production’s dazzle too often overpowers Wilde’s text |
| Financial Times | ★★★ | Thrillingly timely in places, but scattershot. Fun, uneven, and held back by its own excess. |
The reviews: what they loved about An Ideal Husband
- The ensemble performances. The Stage’s Neil Norman singled out the breadth of the cast, with Westman’s dandy-ish Goring described as “the most grounded and serious character on stage,” Tiwa Lade’s Mabel “ramped up to great effect,” and Tamara Lawrance delivering a “wonderful account of a woman blind to her husband’s imperfections.” The FT’s Tim Bano also praised Westman’s charm and Lade’s comic timing.
- La Barrie’s command of the material. The Stage was the most enthusiastic about the direction, praising La Barrie’s ability to shift the play effortlessly between drawing-room comedy, dramatic confrontation and outright farce, noting that “throughout, the big question of what constitutes morality and truth in the modern age comes across as clear as a bell.” Time Out similarly admired the production’s visual flair and Rajha Shakiry’s vibrant design.
- The play’s contemporary resonance. All three critics responded to the production’s modernisation of Wilde’s political themes. The FT noted that Chiltern’s defence of his past actions echoes exactly the kind of arguments made by contemporary politicians, while The Stage observed that Wilde’s attacks on Victorian hypocrisy have “never lost their relevance.”
- Emmanuel Akwafo and the comic set pieces. Both The Stage and Time Out highlighted Akwafo’s double butler role as a standout comic turn, generating what The Stage described as “shrieks of laughter.
The reviews: what fell flat for An Ideal Husband
- Aurora Perrineau’s Mrs Cheveley. Both Time Out and the FT found the production’s chief antagonist insufficiently menacing. Time Out noted that “a stiff performance by Perrineau dulls Mrs Cheveley’s edge,” a significant problem when the character is the motor driving the plot.
- Style over substance. Time Out’s Tom Wicker felt the production’s “pumping soundtrack and tendency to over-indulge some supporting turns” too frequently pulled focus from Wilde’s “quippy but fundamentally sincere” exploration of public and private morality. The FT was similarly ambivalent, describing the production as “scattershot, trying things out and seeing what sticks.”
- Tonal inconsistency. The FT observed that the acting ranges across “a wild spectrum,” with some performers going very broad while others feel rushed. The compulsion to generate laughs at every available opportunity, it argued, comes at the cost of “consistency and clarity of purpose.”
The back story
Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband premiered in London in January 1895, just months before his arrest and imprisonment, making it one of the last works he would see produced in his lifetime.
At the time, it received a cooler critical reception than The Importance of Being Earnest, which opened the same year, it is widely regarded as his most politically serious comedy. At its core, it is a play in which the wit serves a genuine argument about the gap between public virtue and private reality, and the impossible standards to which we hold the people around us.
Sir Robert Chiltern has built his political career on a reputation for incorruptibility. When Mrs Cheveley arrives in London with evidence that his fortune was founded on a unsavoury secret, his seemingly perfect world and marriage begin to unravel. His friend, Lord Goring must help him navigate the wreckage. It is a play about whether a good man can also have done a bad thing, and the cost of forgiveness.
Cast
- Lord Goring: Jamael Westman (Hamilton)
- Sir Robert Chiltern: Chiké Okonkwo
- Lady Chiltern: Tamara Lawrance (Get Millie Black)
- Mrs Cheveley: Aurora Perrineau (KAOS)
- Mabel Chiltern: Tiwa Lade (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Headlong)
- Earl of Caversham: Jeff Alexander (Of Mice and Men)
- Lady Markby: Suzette Llewellyn (EastEnders)
- The wider cast features includes Emmanuel Akwafo (Mason/Phipps), Nimmy March (Lady Basildon) and Sule Thelwell.
The creative team includes director Nicholai La Barrie (God of Carnage, Two Strangers Carry a Cake Across New York), set and costume designer Rajha Shakiry, and choreographer Alexzandra Sarmiento.
Where to see An Ideal Husband
- Venue: Lyric Hammersmith, Lyric Square, King Street, London W6 0QL
- Dates: until 6 June 2026
- Age: 12+
- Runtime: 2 hours 15 minutes
What are the critics saying about An Ideal Husband?
"La Barrie marshals his cast with supreme assurance, allowing Wilde’s arguments and attacks on Victorian hypocrisy great clarity.
"La Barrie has absolute control over the material. Provocatively entertaining."
"La Barrie is adept at encouraging physical humour and reactions without sacrificing the seriousness of intent."
[Westman's Goring is] "fastidiously dandy-ish, yet seems the most grounded and serious character on stage."
"Throughout, the big question of what constitutes morality and truth in the modern age comes across as clear as a bell."
"The dissolute aristocrats from 1895 remain sharply funny, and bitingly relevant, in this flamboyant new spin"
"Its first, slower half does not quite find its footing in pace and tone but it gains a great big boost of life after the interval with a full, frothy and fun embodiment of Wilde’s farce."
"Emmanuel Akwafo, who plays the Chilterns’ quietly disapproving butler, becomes flouncy in his doubling up as Goring’s servant and is one of the highlights. Jeff Alexander, as Goring’s grumpy father, is another."
"The production underlines the ludicrousness of this dissolute, aristocratic gang and its drawing-room mores, making the farce seem all the more farcical."
"Goring’s middle names – Jesús Mohammad – make overt his global majority status. Other references in the script add to the update, from Beyoncé to Barack Obama."
"There are great modernising touches in the soundtrack with numbers by DJ Luck & MC Neat (A Little Bit of Luck), Ms Dynamite (Dy-Na-Mi-Tee) and Ezra Collective (God Gave Me Feet for Dancing) set to super choreography."
"Rajha Shakiry’s costumes waver between period and modern and are both outrageous and elegant."
"This production is a flamboyant celebration of queerness. Some payback for Wilde?"
"This enjoyable new all-Black cast take on the Wilde classic is a little style over substance."
"There are some exquisitely crafted comic performances."
[Westman is] "effortlessly funny while making perfect sense of Wilde's dandy as a joyfully queer force."
"a stiff performance by Perrineau dulls Mrs Cheveley's edge" and "the play gets lost beneath this production's dazzle."
"A lavish, chaotic update of Oscar Wilde — the production carries a thrillingly timely charge, but is often overwhelmed by its own excess."
[Westman's] "charm and insouciant delivery provides a necessary centre of calm in a slightly chaotic production."
"Tiwa Lade’s cutesy-voiced Mabel is particularly funny, and gets all the best togs, with feather-fringed smocks and thick layers of petticoats"
"The modernisation helps the evergreen exchanges about politicians’ behaviour and the narratives around the digging up of past scandal to resonate with a depressing familiarity."
"the compulsion always to score a quick laugh comes at the expense of consistency and clarity of purpose."
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