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    The Oscar Wilde Collection
    The Oscar Wilde Collection
    The Oscar Wilde Collection
    Audiobook8 hours

    The Oscar Wilde Collection

    Written by Oscar Wilde

    Narrated by Jacqueline Bisset, Alfred Molina and Full Cast

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    Four classic comedies from one of the wittiest playwrights in Western literature.

    Lady Windermere’s Fan
    The irreverent satire that launched Wilde’s succession of classical comedies. A Lord, his wife, her admirer and an infamous blackmailer converge in this delicious comic feast of scandal. A divinely funny comedy of good girls, bad husbands and the moral hypocrisy of British high society in the late nineteenth century.
    An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring: Roger Rees, Eric Stoltz, Miriam Margolyes, Joanna Going, Gina Field, Judy Geeson, Arthur Hanket, Lisa Harrow, Dominic Keating, James Warwick, Tom Wheatley. Directed by Michael Hackett.

    An Ideal Husband
    Devilishly attractive Lord Illingworth is notorious for his skill as a seducer. But he is still invited to all the “best” houses while his female conquests must hide their shame in seclusion. In this devastating comedy, Wilde uses his celebrated wit to expose English society’s narrow view of everything from sexual mores to Americans.
    An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring: Miriam Margolyes, Samantha Mathis, Rosalind Ayres, Jane Carr, Peter Dennis, Judy Geeson, Paul Gutrecht, Martin Jarvis, Cherie Lunghi, Robert Machray and Jim Norton. Directed by Michael Hackett.

    A Woman of No Importance
    A tender love story, a glittering setting in London society and a shower of witticisms are only a few of the reasons this play has enjoyed hugely successful revivals. This 1895 drama is eerily prescient, as it explores the plight of a promising young politician, desperate to hide a secret in his past. With empathy and wit, Wilde explores the pitfalls of holding public figures to higher standards than the rest of us.
    An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring: Jacqueline Bisset, Alfred Molina, Yeardley Smith, Rosalind Ayres, Paul Gutrecht, Martin Jarvis, Robert Machray, Miriam Margolyes and Jim Norton. Directed by Michael Hackett.

    The Importance of Being Earnest
    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.
    An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring: James Marsters, Emily Bergl, Charles Busch, Neil Dickson, Jill Gascoine, Christopher Neame, Matthew Wolf and Sarah Zimmerman. Directed by Michael Hackett.

    The Picture of Dorian Gray
    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.
    An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring: Steve Juergens, Jim Ortlieb, Colleen Crimmins, Roger Mueller, Thomas Carroll, Paulin Brailsford, Rush Pearson and Martin Duffy. Directed by Terry McCabe.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherL.A. Theatre Works
    Release dateJun 1, 2010
    ISBN9781580817547
    Author

    Oscar Wilde

    Oscar Fingal O'Flaherty Wills Wilde was born in Dublin in 1854. He studied at Trinity College Dublin and then at Magdalen College Oxford where he started the cult of 'Aestheticism', which involves making an art of life. Following his marriage to Constance Lloyd in 1884, he published several books of stories ostensibly for children and one novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891). Wilde's first success as a playwright was with Lady Windemere's Fan in 1892. He followed this up with A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest, all performed on the London stage between 1892 and 1895. However Wilde's homosexual relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas was exposed by the young man's father, the Marquis of Queensbury. Wilde brought a libel suit against Queensbury but lost and was sentenced to two year's imprisonment. He was released in 1897 and fled to France where he died a broken man in 1900.

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    Reviews for The Oscar Wilde Collection

    4/5

    23 ratings3 reviews

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    • 4/5
      A Woman of No Importance - A young man with limited prospects finds himself offered a prestigious job with a man he very much admires. This new role completely changes his future and will hopefully allow him to marry the woman he loves. Unfortunately, his mother inexplicably dislikes his benefactor and begs him to turn down the offer. This man is actually the lying cad who sullied her reputation and then abandoned her and her child. She is afraid to confide this to her son, however, as she believes he will judge her harshly. He does at first, but his mind is changed by the young woman he loves. An Ideal Husband - The wife of a politician is quite confident is his character until someone approaches him for blackmail. In exchange for an incriminating letter, the husband agrees to betray his principles. But when his wife learns of his intention but no the reason behind it, she persuades him to refuse the scheme and stand by his beliefs. In the end, the truth with come out, but will this wife be able to accept and love a husband who is capable of error?Lady Windemere's Fan - A young married woman is horrified to discover an illicit relationship between her husband and a mysterious woman. Although her husband swears there is nothing scandalous happening, he cannot explain why he has been sending her so much money in secret. Although the titular Lady Windemere is determined to insult this woman of her husband's she cannot bring herself to do it but instead determines to leave her marriage. To her surprise, she finds an unlikely friend in this strange woman who sacrifices her own reputation to preserve Lady Windemere's. Later it is revealed that this woman his Lady Windemere's mother who had abandoned her years ago. She was hoping to use her daughter's connections to rebuild her own social reputation but now finds herself unwilling to let her daughter know the truth of their relationship. She ends up marrying a wealthy old man and retiring out of the country.The Importance of Being Earnest - An extremely silly play about two friends who each adopt the alias Earnest in order to woo their loves. However, this innocent deception soon takes on a very serious nature when they each propose only to learn that their lady loves are overly attached to the name Earnest. Although they each endeavor to be rechristened before the deception can be unraveled all is shortly discovered. Luckily other secrets of parentage are revealed that soon set matters to rights.The Picture of Dorian Gray - The classic story of a vain young man who makes a Faustian bargain to remain young and beautiful. As his life descends further into wanton cruelty and debauchery, the painting in a hidden room takes on all the scars of his evil while he stays outwardly the same. Eventually, he turns upon the painting as the final evidence of his true nature and dies from its destruction.I truly enjoyed experiencing these plays, although I'd heard most of them before. The final adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray did not have the same power as the others. There's probably a reason that Wilde himself didn't adapt it for the stage. There's a lot of narration that bogs the action down.
    • 4/5
      This audio collection contains full-cast presentations of four of Wilde’s plays and an adaptation of his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. Overall, I enjoyed the collection and thought it was a fun read/listen.The audiobook begins with a full-cast reading of A Woman of No Importance, a Wilde play with which I had no previous familiarity. At its heart, this play concerns a woman and a man who had an illegitimate son many years ago and after years of never seeing each other, they randomly bump into each other at a social gathering. Of the four plays presented here, this one was the only one to lean a little more toward the melodramatic than the comedic. (For some reason, I kept being reminded of James A. Herne’s Margaret Fleming.) Because I was less knowledgeable about this one and there was a large cast of characters, I actually had to go back to the beginning after getting about 15-20 minutes in so that I could get a better grip on who was who in the play. Not having stage directions nor the visual cues of different actors/costumes, I found it was a little bit difficult at first to keep track when all the various characters were introduced. Once I had that sorted out, I rather enjoyed this play, although as I already noted it was a bit atypical for Wilde in terms of the comedy. That being said though, it did have one the best final lines I’ve heard and other bits of wit dropped here and there. Also, some of the play’s underlying themes are quite similar to other Wilde plays; for instance, secrets that haunt a character’s chances of happiness and mockery of the upper classes are both featured heavily here as they are in other works by Wilde. It touches on important issues of the day (and indeed, ones that are still contemporary), such as gendered double standards. With a wide cast of characters, some are unfortunately more one-dimensional than others, but I quite liked the title character, who made the play that much more interesting. The next play presented was An Ideal Husband, which I had never read or seen before, although I had previously watched the 1999 movie version and enjoyed that. Lady Chiltern believes she has an ideal upright husband who abides by the same high moral conduct code that she does. When Mrs. Cheveley, an old schoolmate of Lady Chiltern’s who represents all she dislikes, arrives on the scene, however, a variety of things emerge about the Chilterns and their close circle of friends. This play is a bit complicated, with a variety of secrets, blackmailing, and misunderstandings making it a comedy of errors almost in the style of Shakespearean comedies. There are obviously serious issues underlying all this comedy though – including corruption in politics, the marriage state, and the status of women vs. men at the time. The characters all seem to be caricatures at first but as the play progresses, we learn that there is more to each character than appears on the surface. So even while this play is entertaining and funny, there’s more to digest after you’ve had your laugh. This is now one of my favorite plays by Wilde, and I’d definitely listen to, read, or see it again – or perhaps all three over time.The next play in the bunch is Lady Windermere’s Fan, which I first (and last) read a good 12 years ago; I liked it the first time and enjoyed it again here. This was Wilde’s first play after turning from tragedies to comedies, and there are still certainly some underlying tragic themes, although ultimately all’s well that ends well. Lady Windermere believes that her husband is cheating on her with a woman named Mrs. Erlynne and is mortified when he invites this woman to their home for Lady Windermere’s birthday ball. We soon learn, however, that there are skeletons in Lady Windermere’s closest, so to speak, and her Puritanical views are hypocritical at best. Once again, Wilde skewers the upper class and the state of matrimony through secret identities and mishaps based on partial information. This play doesn’t have quite as many witty one-liners as some of the others, but it’s a thoroughly entertaining romp. Having read it twice now in one fashion or another, I’d like to see this one performed and note how it plays out live on stage. The final play collected here is The Importance of Being Earnest, which is probably Wilde’s best known play. Two men are in love with two different women who each believe their beau to be named Ernest; problem is that there’s actually no Ernest at all but rather one identity created and shared to allow the men to protect their reputations while getting up to mischief. I’d read this before more than a decade ago and saw the 2002 movie version about five years ago. While I had found it highly amusing on the first read, I was less enamored with it this time. It certainly is funny and has some of the wittiest one-liners and conversations out of the lot presented here. The mistaken identities trope is used again here with the greatest tongue in cheek and the precarious nature of the marriage state is the most obviously poked fun at here. But the characters here are all so ridiculously shallow and superficial with really no redeeming qualities about them that it gives the play a bit of a bad aftertaste. Whereas in the other three plays you wanted everything to work out well for at least one of the characters, here the happy ending is merely entertaining because of the convoluted route it took to get there; it’s not actually something you felt was necessary for these characters. (Although you could certainly argue that this play, despite the more absurd nature of it, perhaps most closely resembles real life in that the less than wonderful people still end up all right in the end.)This collection is rounded out with an adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s only novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, which is well acted and seems to be well adapted as far as I can tell, having never read the original. While it seemed to cover all the major plot points (again, to the best of my knowledge), I still felt as though I was missing something. There were large parts of Dorian’s life that were clearly passed over, even acknowledged as such, and I’d like to have known more about that time period. There was some narration given here to make up for any points missed via dialogue, but it’s clearly not a novel for obvious reasons. Several of the lines in the dialogue were the same or slight re-workings of lines from Wilde’s plays; I don’t know if this is true in the source material also or if they were added in to make this more dramatic work a little lighter. At this point, I’d definitely like to try again with The Picture of Dorian Gray and get the unabridged version before making any kind of final assessment about it.Overall, this was a fine production of several important works from Oscar Wilde; a variety of talented actors were employed, including some “big names” like Alfred Molina and Eric Stoltz, to create a rich listening experience. It’s not over the top, but there are some additional sound effects such as birds chirping and short musical interludes. In addition to all this, the collection includes a brief introduction to each play that puts it into some context historically and/or thematically. (However, at one point it’s noted that A Woman of No Importance was Wilde’s second play, when it was actually his fourth. It was, however, only his second comedic play, but that distinction is not made.) There’s also an interview with Wilde’s grandson, which provides some interesting details, especially regarding Wilde’s infamous trial and what he notes are popular misconceptions about Wilde. Altogether, I found this to be a highly entertaining collection and would recommend it for those who enjoy Oscar Wilde’s wit, witty one-liners in general, Victorian literature, drawing room theater, and/or comedic plays with mistaken identities, hidden pasts, and the lot.
    • 3/5
      These were actual performances from a LA production.