Learn about the history of Oscar Wilde plays in London

As The Importance of Being Earnest, Salomé and Oscar at The Crown show different facets of the great playwright, revisit some of his storied history.

Audiences went wild for Max Webster’s exuberant revival of comedy The Importance of Being Earnest last year at the National Theatre, and the production is now bounding into the West End. It’s part of a mini Oscar Wilde season in London, with a new production of his Salomé also coming into town, plus the playwright has a starring role in Oscar at The Crown.

As you plan a trip to some or all of these wildly entertaining shows, take a look back at the long and impressive history of Wilde’s plays in London.

Salomé

Wilde’s one-act dramatisation of the Biblical story centres on Herod Antipas’s stepdaughter, the alluring princess Salomé. She becomes fascinated by the imprisoned holy man John the Baptist, but he rejects her, swearing she will never kiss his mouth. Salomé performs the seductive dance of the seven veils for Herod, and he promises to give her anything she wants. Her demand is John the Baptist’s head on a silver platter – which she then kisses.

Wilde originally hoped the play would be staged in London in 1892, starring Sarah Bernhardt, but it was banned by the Lord Chamberlain because of its Biblical content. The ban wasn’t lifted until 1931, when it finally had its public premiere at the Savoy Theatre, starring Robert Farquharson as Herod, and real-life mother and daughter Nancy Price and Joan Maude as Herodias and daughter Salomé.

The play has been revived in London several times since, including in 1954 and, more successfully, at the Roundhouse in 1977 in a free adaptation by Lindsay Kemp. Steven Berkoff also staged it at the National Theatre in 1988.

Now Salomé returns in daring new version by Gesher Theatre, which promises a dark, decadent vision of power, eroticism, and obsession. The play runs this autumn at Theatre Royal Haymarket in the West End.

Book Salomé tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk.

Lady Windermere’s Fan

The first of Wilde’s acclaimed comedies of society manners sees Lady Windermere accuse her husband of having an affair. She’s so convinced that she decides to leave him for Lord Darlington. But her husband’s supposed mistress, Mrs Erlynne, saves Lady Windermere from scandal – and it turns out that Mrs Erlynne is actually Lady Windermere’s estranged mother.

The play premiered at the St James’s Theatre in London in 1892, starring George Alexander, Lily Hanbury, and Marion Terry, and later transferred to Broadway. It has returned to the capital multiple times, including a run at the Vaudeville Theatre in 2018. Kathy Burke directed a cast led by Samantha Spiro, Grace Molony and, returning to the West End after a two-decade absence, Jennifer Saunders.

A Woman of No Importance

Wilde confronted Victorian society’s gendered double standards in his next play. Lord Illingworth is a successful political figure, despite his amoral behaviour, but the woman he had a son with out of wedlock, Mrs Arbuthnot, was drummed out of society. We get a fascinating battle for the soul of their son – and the ensuing revelations challenge the simplistic views of their Puritanical young American visitor Hester.

Mixing melodrama and witty comedy, A Woman of No Importance made its successful premiere in 1893 at the Haymarket Theatre, starring Herbert and Mrs Beerbohm Tree, Fred Terry, Julia Neilson, and Mrs Bernard Beere. Tree revived it again in 1907, and the show returned to London in 1953 at the Savoy Theatre, the Vaudeville Theatre in 1967, the Barbican in 1991, and the Haymarket in 2003.

Most recently, Dominic Dromgoole staged the play at the Vaudeville in 2017, starring Eve Best, Dominic Rowan, Emma Fielding, Eleanor Bron, Phoebe Fildes, and Anne Reid. Dromgoole curated a Wilde season at the venue, which continued with Lady Windermere’s Fan, An Ideal Husband, and The Importance of Being Earnest.

An Ideal Husband

Scandal and honour crop up again in An Ideal Husband, along with a dastardly blackmail plot. The play centres on a celebrated couple, principled government minister Sir Robert Chiltern and his virtuous wife Lady Chiltern. Sir Robert is extorted by Mrs Cheveley, who threatens to reveal a misdeed from his past unless he backs her dodgy canal scheme. Sir Robert fears that he will not only lose his career, but his wife’s love and respect.

A romcom subplot sees the eternal bachelor Lord Goring, whose grouchy father Lord Caversham wants him to marry, sparring with Sir Robert’s younger sister Mabel. The play is a brilliant combination of tense, morally complex drama and playful flirtation.

An Ideal Husband premiered at St James’s Theatre in 1914, led by Arthur Wontner, Phyllis Neilson-Terry, Hilda Moore, and George Alexander. It was first revived in 1943, and has been seen frequently since, including in a Peter Hall production at what was then the Globe Theatre (now Gielgud), featuring David Yelland, Hannah Gordon, Anna Carteret and Martin Shaw, and in 2010 at the Vaudeville starring Alexander Hanson, Rachael Stirling, Samantha Bond, and Elliot Cowan.

The play returned to the Vaudeville for the Classic Spring season in 2018, this time led by Nathaniel Parker, Sally Bretton, real-life father and son Edward Fox and Freddie Fox, Frances Barber, and Susan Hampshire.

The Importance of Being Earnest

Wilde’s most beloved and oft-revived comedy is The Importance of Being Earnest. It features two bachelor friends, Earnest Worthing and Algernon Moncrieff, both living double lives. Earnest is actually known as Jack in the country, where he is a sober guardian to young Cecily Cardew; Algernon has invented a sick friend, Bunbury, to get him out of social engagements organised by his domineering Aunt, Lady Bracknell.

Their secret lives collide when Algernon invades Jack’s country home, pretending to be Earnest, and falls in love with Cecily, to Jack’s fury, while Jack tries to win Lady Bracknell’s approval for his marrying her daughter Gwendolyn. But the secret of Jack’s origins (he was found in “a handbag”, in Lady Bracknell’s peerless line) holds the key to everyone’s happiness.

The play premiered at St James’s Theatre in 1895, starring George Alexander, Allan Aynesworth, Rose Leclercq, and Irene Vanbrugh. It has become a staple of the theatrical canon, with actresses lining up to play Lady Bracknell – including John Gielgud’s aunt Mabel Terry-Lewis, playing opposite him at the Lyric Hammersmith in 1930; Edith Evans making the role her own in 1939 at the Globe; Judi Dench in Peter Hall’s 1982 National Theatre production; and Maggie Smith at the Aldwych Theatre in 1993.

In 2024 Max Webster put a fresh spin on the play with his gloriously, overtly queer production at the National Theatre, starring Ncuti Gatwa, Hugh Skinner, and Sharon D Clarke. Now Webster’s version is hitting the West End, featuring Olly Alexander, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Hugh Dennis, Shobna Gulati, Kitty Hawthorne, Jessica Whitehurst, Hayley Carmichael, and, playing Lady Bracknell, Stephen Fry.

Book The Importance of Being Earnest tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk.

Oscar at The Crown

Wilde is such an influential figure in British theatre that he has become a key character in an underground New York musical, now also a cult hit in London. Oscar at The Crown imagines a futuristic dystopian world, where Wilde and his fellow exiles are hiding out in a secret bunker.

Enter this neon-lit, immersive space and you’ll meet the whole gang, including versions of people from Wilde’s actual life, such as his lover Lord Alfred Douglas, but transposed to a thrilling nightclub setting. RuPaul’s Drag Race songwriter Andrew Barret Cox supplies a pulse-racing electro-pop score in this tribute to Wilde the rebel, who used his art to challenge social norms and fight for freedom for all.

Book Oscar at The Crown tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk.