Dominic Dromgoole announces West End Oscar Wilde season

The ex-Globe Artistic Director teams up with Nica Burns.

It has been announced that the ex-artistic director of Shakespeare's Globe Dominic Dromgoole is gearing up to collaborate with West End theatre owner and producer Nica Burns on a new company called Classic Spring.

Dedicated to celebrating work by 'proscenium playwrights' the company aims to stage plays in the theatres that they were originally written for. The first production in the Classic Spring season will be a revival of Oscar Wilde's comedy A Woman of No Importance which will open in October 2017 at a yet-to-be-announced Nimax Theatre venue. It will be followed by revivals of further Wilde plays including Lady Windermere's Fan, An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest.

The season, which will run for a year to late 2018, will then be followed by a season of plays dedicated to George Bernard Shaw.

Speaking about the launch of the season, Dromgoole commented: "It has always been my pleasure and privilege to support and promote 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 those writers who defined the proscenium century, and who still speak to us piercingly and profoundly today."

Speaking about the first season of Oscar Wilde plays, he continued: "Oscar Wilde as exemplified in the stunning and provocative recent exhibition at Reading Gaol by Artangel, was one of the pioneering iconoclasts of the Victorian age, and these gorgeous witty plays are still shining examples of how to satirise the world you live in, and how to nudge it forwards. I look forward to presenting them across a year-long season in the West End."

The pair also announced that they were to partner with Tall Stories to create new children's shows for 4-8 year olds under the title 'Wilde Creatures', as well as 'Wilde Cards' interspersed amongst the plays based on the many essays and poems of Oscar Wilde.

More information about the Classic Spring company is yet to be announced.