Story: 7 / 10
Characters: 8.5
Setting: 5.5
Prose: 8 ( )

While An Ideal Husband is typical Wilde in many ways, it is not Wilde at his best. Both Lady Windemere's Fan and The Importance of Being Ernest eclipse it. Still, great fun and charged with the kind of wit one expects from Wilde.

There is a play upon role reversal that is hilarious, as it is the woman who puts the man upon a pedestal and then knocks him off. There are the usual high-jinks with letters that come into the wrong hands and a ludicrous, but quite nifty, foiling of the primary villain. In fact, it has every single element that you come to expect and adore in a Wilde production. At the same time, it does manage to deal with at least one very serious issue...that of the ideal. To expect that any person can be ideal and flawless is to set one's self up for disaster.

One thing that struck me was the way Wilde wrote his stage directions. For each person as they enter the scene, he describes the type of art piece they would resemble. He had every physical trait and mannerism in his mind as he crafted these characters. I would love to see this play acted. I'm guessing it could be appreciated at one-step higher level seen on stage. ( )

This play was so funny and entertaining while addressing such a serious and important topic. I really enjoyed it and would love to see it performed some day. ( )

Really enjoyed this one. ( )

I wasn't nearly as impressed with this play as I was with the previous two. The drama was still entertaining, but the plot was more about political morality and unrealistic expectations, plus the characters all wound up far too happily ever after for my liking. If we're going to talk about dirty politicians they need to have their comeuppance - even though I fully admit that it's more realistic if they get away with all their scheming... Yuck! ( )