A WOMAN OF NO IMPORTANCE Vaudeville Theatre

Dominic Dromgoole’s first season at Vaudeville Theatre is devoted entirely to the plays of Oscar Wilde and opens with A Woman of No Importance, a satire on Victorian society and its lax morality, its hypocrisy and its double standards of one law for men and another for women. The play has always had a bad press ever since its premiere in 1893 but the theatregoing public has always enjoyed the mixture of melodrama and witty epigrams. In any battle between puritans and profligates you might expect Wilde to be on the side of the sinners; but here the puritans rout the profligates completely. Eve Best is completely unfazed by the melodrama and copes admirably with it.