A Wilde way to celebrate the Everyman

STALWART of Cork theatre, Michael Twomey, is directing Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband to celebrate 50 years of the Everyman Theatre Company.

Twomey is revisiting his favourite Wilde play: he directed it 12 years ago. The 1895 comedy-drama is about blackmail and political corruption, and is an astute study of the upper echelons of London society. Some of the actors from the 2002 production are returning, including Conor Dwane, as Lord Chiltern. Shirley McCarthy, who played the ingénue, Mabel Chiltern, back then, is now playing the blackmailer and femme fatale, Mrs Cheveley. Ian McGuirk is playing Lord Goring. Design is by Jim Queally.

The play “has assumed a tremendous topicality,” says Twomey. “You have the political corruption in it and the blackmail. There is this undercurrent running through it, with state secrets being sold for money. It’s extraordinarily relevant to today’s world.”