A Woman of No Importance
- By Oscar Wilde
- Directed by James Bundy
- March 21 to April 12, 2008
- Yale Repertory Theatre
Lords and ladies gather for afternoon tea and brilliant banter at an idyllic English country estate. For young Gerald Arbuthnot and his mother, the assembled not-so-polite company hold the keys to happiness in love and life. In this comedy of serial seducers, moralizing monogamists, secret pasts and simmering heartbreak, how will the Arbuthnots choose between social advancement and painful truths spoken from the heart?
In 1895, the year that saw the debut of Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, the playwright lost everything when he was convicted of “gross indecency” and sentenced to two years in prison. A Woman of No Importance had premiered two years earlier and anticipated the forces that would strike him down. Of British society, he said, “To be in it is merely a bore. To be out of it is simply a tragedy.”
