Dominic Dromgoole announces Oscar Wilde season

Former Shakespeare's Globe artistic director Dominic Dromgoole has announced a quartet of Oscar Wilde productions for his new company, Classic Spring.

The Oscar Wilde season kicks off at the Vaudeville Theatre in October with A Woman of No Importance (6 October to 30 December), directed by Dromgoole and starring Olivier Award-winner Eve Best (Love in Idleness).

Dromgoole said A Woman of No Importance would be "heavily Victorian" in set and costume, because, "to understand who we are now, it's useful to look back at the past."

This will be followed by Lady Windermere’s Fan, which will be directed by Kathy Burke and runs from 12 January to 7 April. The other two productions will be An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest, with details on dates, cast and creatives to be announced at a later date.

An adaptation of De Profundis, Wilde's letter to Lord Alfred Bosie from Reading Gaol, by Frank McGuinness will run from 3 to 6 January. Then in April 2018, there will be a series of 'lightly-staged' performances of The Selfish Giant, a new folk opera by songwriter Guy Chambers. Chambers is best known for his work with Robbie Williams (Angels), Kylie Minogue and Mark Ronson.

Olivier Award-nominated company Tall Stories will also present a new family musical called Wilde Creatures based on Wilde's fairy tales (15 to 31 December).

Dromgoole said: "Oscar Wilde was more of a natural rebel and iconoclast than people usually give him credit for… he was extraordinary, an anti-authoritarian and debunker of all prejudice."

He added: "It has always been my pleasure and privilege to support the voices of writers, whether new writers at the Bush, the Old Vic or the Globe, or Shakespeare, the mainspring of our theatre culture. This is a wonderful chance to present the work of more writers, who still speak to us piercingly and profoundly today."

Dromgoole's new company, Classic Spring, will be dedicated to celebrating work by 'proscenium playwrights' and staging them in the theatres they wrote for.

A Woman of No Importance runs at the Vaudeville Theatre from 6 October to 30 December. Lady Windermere's Fan also runs at the Vaudeville Theatre from 12 January to 7 April.

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