SOUTHEND Shakespeare Company is giving the Bard a brief holiday. Their next production returns instead to another giant of the theatre, Oscar Wilde.

Following their 2012 production of Wilde’s most famous play, the Importance of Being Earnest, the Shakespearians are following up with another much-loved and much-quoted classic, An ideal Husband.

With its perceptive insights into Westminster politics, and the world of deals, compromises and embarrassing secrets, this sparkling play could have been written today. Above all, though, it is a textbook of brilliant wit.

The title character, Sir Robert Chiltern, MP, (Jeremy Battersby) has everything. Rich, handsome, clever and a brilliant orator, he seems destined for the highest political office. Top, though, in this list of blessings, is his beautiful wife Lady Gertrude (Louise Calton).

Sir Robert, however, has a secret. His career, marriage, and all the things he cares about, threaten to unravel when a scheming woman, Mrs Cheveley (Amanda Whiteford), who knows all about his secret, arrives back in his life.

He turns to his friend, Lord Goring (David Hanington) for help. In the end, though, it is Chiltern’s wife who holds the key to saving him.

The resulting intrigues provide fascinating insights into late Victorian high society, but, as usual with Wilde, it is the witticisms that set this play apart. It includes such famous observations as: “Fashion is what one wears oneself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear.”

The play, however, is also overlaid with poignancy. The theme of a dark, explosive secret that could tear a life apart was soon to be played out in Wilde’s life. Three months after the play opened, Wilde was arrested for “gross indecency”, and his name taken off the play.

An Ideal Husband
Until Saturday
7.45pm, mat Sat 3pm.
Palace Theatre, Dixon Studio, London Road, Westcliff.
Tickets £11 (conc £9.50)
01702 351135