A Woman of No Importance

The Shaw Festival presents Oscar Wilde’s A Woman of No Importance. A social flutter, an afternoon of amusing chatter, epigrammatic playfulness in a great country-house turns into something much darker when we meet the witty, amoral Lord Illingworth. To his surprise he finds himself face to face with a woman from his past. “A woman,” he says, “of no importance.” Unfortunately for him, he is wrong. The social customs are those of the late nineteenth century but the emotions are universal.