An Ideal Husband – Reviews Round-up

“Wilde's play used to be seen as a second-rate melodrama festooned with dazzling epigrams. But Peter Hall's landmark 1992 production asked us to take it seriously. And, even if Lindsay Posner's current revival is not quite on that level, it offers a good evening and reminds us that Wilde's wit masked a vision of life.”

“The real star turn comes from Samantha Bond as the blackmailing Mrs Cheveley. Playing a woman with a past who wears too much rouge and too few clothes, she brings a delicious vivacity and wit to the role, delivering her lines in a voice that is a mixture of honey and ground glass. Her squirming victim is played by Hanson, Bond’s real life husband, adding a piquant twist to this richly entertaining evening.”

“I almost wished that Cowan could swap roles with Alexander Hanson who has too even-tempered an air to convey the neurotic edge of Sir Robert's misplaced sense of rectitude. Samantha Bond is splendid, though, as Mrs Cheveley, radiating a humbug-puncturing wit that makes you realise that she and Lord Goring are, in a sense, exotic birds of a feather, the one as corrupted as the other is humanised by a talent for seeing through English hypocrisy.”

“An Ideal Husband is nobody’s idea of Oscar Wilde at his best, andLindsay Posner’s opulent production gets off to a slow start, in which the writing seems almost ponderous. Yet as the plot’s contrivances escalate, it becomes energetically entertaining — a glossy melodrama, certainly, but one studded with smart lines and, more surprisingly, imbued with humanity.”

“With Lindsay Posner’s strongly cast, sumptuous revival of this thriller of corruption at Westminster, Oscar Wilde’s political comedy enjoys a fresh burst of life and contemporary relevance.”