7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Classic entertainment, October 16, 2010
This review is from: The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays: Lady Windermere's Fan; Salome; A Woman of No Importance; An Ideal Husband; The Importance of Being Earnest (Oxford World's Classics) (Paperback)
The plays of Oscar Wilde sum up, even moreso than The Picture of Dorian Gray, all his flaws and talents and his propensity for playing the role of Oscar Wilde. If you're new to his world, I can't recommend a better introduction than the Oxford World's Classics edition of five of his most important plays.
"Lady Windermere's Fan" is an engaging start, high quality (excepting some rather awkward soliloquies), artificial and with a complex antagonist in Mrs. Erlynne. Lady Windermere evolves as a character, the pacing is well set and everyone walks away with one illusion...except Mrs. Erlynne. It walks the line between comedy and drama, and serves as a most enjoyable start.
"Salome" is atypical of the set, an aethetic work of art for art's sake. It's a heavy drama in one act, with overwrought, yet strangely believable phrases. I had to play "spot John the Baptist" for a while, not realizing that he was referred to as Iokanaan. It's a mood piece, weaving a fabulous spell, full of rapturous descriptions of jewels and wealth, dark imagery and a fantastically macabre climax.
"A Woman of No Importance" is the worst of the set. Dandy as VILLIAN was a bit strained, but alright. The real problems came from A: recycling witticisms. Some of the best lines in this play were also copied verbatim in The Picture of Dorian Gray, completely jarring me out of the story. B: the melodrama. Standards of melodrama are utilized shamelessly; the finale is a great mess of characters weeping at each others feet, lots of "I am not worthy of this and thats" abound, and I didn't care one jot about anyone. C: Hester, our heroine, was nauseatingly Puritanical. Unlike Lasy Windermere and Lady Chiltern, she never evolves, never learns to see the shades of gray in sin and morality.
"An Ideal Husband" is easily my favorite. A ripping good yarn, full of hero (or husband) worship, blackmail, a Wodehouseian butler, a perfect pace, and the marvelously endearing dandy Lord Goring. Most of the dandies Wilde created wind up rather unappealing in the long run, so meeting a complete charmer was a treat. It also manages to be romantic, albeit frivolously so, and is a perfect blend of comedy and drama.
"The Importance of Being Earnest" really didn't do it for me. Highly ridiculous, with completely unbelievable characters and dialogue. His most artificial work (and coming from Oscar, that is saying something!) It was alright, of course, but the dramatic edge was removed and all the scuffles over food look far better on stage or screen.
Despite the flaws in all these plays, and in pretty much anything Oscar Wilde set his name to, reading this set was so heartily enjoyable that it caused me to pick up The Complete Oscar Wilde. The Oxford World's Classics contains expansive notes, always readable, if not always terribly relevant. A good edition that I fully recommend.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Oscar Wilde!, April 30, 2011
This review is from: The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays: Lady Windermere's Fan; Salome; A Woman of No Importance; An Ideal Husband; The Importance of Being Earnest (Oxford World's Classics) (Paperback)
All of the plays in this book are delightfully sardonic, hilarious and poignant about the superficiality/triviality and haphazardous nature of culture and humanity. They are rather formulaic, I must say, so it is best not to read them one after another, but it is absolute pleasure and always a delight to read anything by this author. No wonder he is most quoted... "I can resist everything except temptation." "Taking sides in the beginning of sincerity, and earnestness follows shortly afterwards, and the human being becomes a bore."We in the House of Lords are never in touch with public opinion. That makes us a civilised body." "So much marriage is certainly not becoming. Twenty years of romance make a woman look like a ruin; but twenty years of marriage make her something like a public building."... So irreverent, so politically incorrect, so cleverly blatant...scary funny.
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
very much worth reading, July 10, 2010
This review is from: The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays: Lady Windermere's Fan; Salome; A Woman of No Importance; An Ideal Husband; The Importance of Being Earnest (Oxford World's Classics) (Paperback)
I've seen most of these as film adaptations before, but the plays themselves are quite
an entertaining read. Sometimes these read just like a vehicle for Wilde's aphorisms,
but even then they are very entertaining.
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