Showing results for "Oscar" in Drama

Four classic comedies from one of the wittiest playwrights in Western literature: Lady Windermere's Fan, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband, and The Importance of Being Earnest, all featuring star-studded casts with the likes of Jacqueline Bisset, Miriam Margolyes, James Marsters, Alfred Molina, Roger Rees, Yeardley Smith, Eric Stoltz, and many more. This audio also includes a chilling dramatization of Wilde's sole novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray.

A tender love story, a serpentine villainess, a glittering setting in London society, and a showering of Wildean witticism are only a few of the reasons why this play has enjoyed hugely successful revivals in London, in New York, and on the silver screen. This 1895 drama is eerily prescient, as it examines the plight of a promising politician, desperate to hide a secret in his past. With empathy and wit, Oscar Wilde explores the pitfalls of holding public figures to higher standards than the rest of us.

This final play from the pen of Oscar Wilde is a stylish send-up of Victorian courtship and manners, complete with assumed names, mistaken lovers, and a lost handbag. Jack and Algernon are best friends, both wooing ladies who think their names are Ernest, "that name which inspires absolute confidence." Wilde’s effervescent wit, scathing social satire, and high farce make this one of the most cherished plays in the English language.

A dark tale of hubris, lust, and self-destruction… as told by a man who famously fell prey to those same impulses in his own life. Oscar Wilde wrote his original interpretation of the Biblical story of Salomé in French, and the play was so controversial that no theatre in England would produce it for nearly four decades. Includes a conversation with director Michael Hackett and Wilde scholar David Rodes. An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast production.

An Ideal Husband is an 1895 comedy by Oscar Wilde which revolves around blackmail and political corruption, and touches on the themes of public and private honor. The action is set in London, and takes place over the course of 24 hours.

The Importance of Being Earnest is a play written by the renowned playwright and author, Oscar Wilde. It premiered in London on Valentines Day, 1895, and was an instant success. With The Importance of Being Earnest, Wilde accomplished what he'd set out to do, which was to make light of the humorous behavior of British high society.

A Woman of No Importance takes place in a 24-hour period during a house party hosted by Lady Hunstanton at her country estate. The upper echelons of English society mix, mingle and flirt, including Lady Caroline Pontefract (who is on her fourth husband), the witty and ironic Mrs. Allonby and the dandyish Lord Illingworth. Wilde balances these worldly characters with a visiting young American woman, Hester Worsley.

A lord, his wife, her admirer and an infamous blackmailer converge in the irreverent satire that launched Wilde's succession of classic social comedies. This delicious comic feast serves up a scandal about good girls, bad husbands and hilarious hypocrisy - utterly contemporary and divinely funny.

Oscar Wilde created his final and most lasting play, one of the comic masterpieces of all time, The Importance of Being Earnest, in 1895. It is a farce playing with love, religion, and truth as it tells the tale of two men, Jack Worthing and Algernon Moncrieff, who bend the truth in order to add excitement to their lives. Jack invents an imaginary brother, Ernest, whom he uses as an excuse to escape from his dull country home and gallivant in town.

A classic comedy by the great Oscar Wilde. The Importance of Being Earnest is his short farce consisting of numerous noms de plume, a case of mistaken identity, an identity left in a case by mistake, and the mistake of revealing ones identity in the presence of a previous employer, which may result post-script in a case for Scotland Yard. Or to put much more simply, of Jack and his attempts to woo Gwendolyn, his would-be bride... even if she does seem to think his name is Earnest.

The Importance of Being Earnest is Wilde's most famous and oft-produced play. First performed in 1895, and subtitled "A Trivial Comedy for Serious People", it shows Wilde at his satirical and scathingly witty best. It follows the misadventures of Algy and Jack as they attempt to woo and wed Cecily and Gwendolen under the assumed name "Ernest", much to the disapproval of the aristocratic Lady Bracknell.

The Importance of Being Earnest is probably the wittiest comedy in the English language; it is certainly the least earnest. The subtitle, "A Trivial Comedy for Serious People", gives a clear indication of its nature. It is a play about the only subjects that Oscar Wilde would admit taking seriously: wit, elegance, and paradox.

In this wickedly funny play, a seemingly ideal couple and their charming, privileged friends surmount such details as selling government secrets, theft, and bribery with love triumphant over all.

The Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Comedy for Serious People is a play by Oscar Wilde. First performed on February 14, 1895, at the St James' Theatre in London, it is a farcical comedy in which the protagonists maintain fictitious persona to escape burdensome social obligations. Working within the social conventions of late Victorian London, the play's major themes are the triviality with which it treats institutions as serious as marriage and the resulting satire of Victorian ways.

An original recording of one of Oscar Wilde's comedic classics and a precise satire of Britain's upper classes. At a gathering at Hunstanton Chase, the young Gerald Arbuthnot has been given a rare opportunity to make something of himself by the cavalier Lord Illingworth, but a chance meeting between his mother Mrs. Arbuthnot and Lord Illingworth reveals that there's more behind the offer than Gerald knows.

Passion and intrigue among the upper classes form the basis of Lady Windermere's Fan, Oscar Wilde's first successful play, which displays his trademark wit and wisdom. Beautiful and innocent Lady Windermere finds out that her husband has been keeping company with the scandalous and mysterious Mrs. Erlynne. Her discovery unleashes a host of tensions at her 21st birthday party, where London's elite have gathered to gossip.

En la historia de Dorian Gray, que gracias a que tiene un retrato que envejece por el puede dedicarse a las mayores depravaciones y vicios, sin que lo afecten, es un personaje universal, cuyas aventuras hasta su tragico final, se consideran entre las obras maestras de la literatura inglesa.

Lady Windermere's Fan is a four-act comedy by Oscar Wilde. Like many of Wilde's comedies, it bitingly satirizes the morals of Victorian society, particularly marriage. The story concerns Lady Windermere, who discovers that her husband may be having an affair with another woman. She confronts her husband but he instead invites the other woman, Mrs. Erlynne, to his wife's birthday ball. Angered by her husband's unfaithfulness, Lady Windermere leaves her husband for another lover. Or does she?

A full-cast dramatization of one of the great classics of contemporary Western literature. Dorian Gray, an effete young gentleman, is the subject of a striking portrait by the artist Basil Hallward. Gray’s narcissism is awakened, and he embraces a lifestyle of hedonism and casual cruelties. Increasingly consumed by his own vanity, he is forced to confront his true inner-self, in a manner that is as shocking as it is terrifying.

Two stories from Oscar Wilde's Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories performed by Sir Laurence Olivier.