An Ideal Husband review – Oscar Wilde’s comedy gets the gleefully camp glow-up it deserves
Arifa Akbar
Lyric Hammersmith, London The dissolute aristocrats from 1895 remain sharply funny, and bitingly relevant, in this flamboyant new spin Oscar Wilde’s comedy was billed as a “play of modern life” when it premiered at the Haymarket theatre in London in 1895. It is just as modern now in its central, chiming theme: the clandestine corruptions of outwardly squeaky-clean members of parliament. Sir Robert Chiltern (Chiké Okonkwo) is the apparently upstanding minister and “ideal husband” to Lady Chiltern