Acclaimed director and author Dominic Dromgoole discusses Oscar Wilde and theatre in this talk at the Oscar Wilde Society Annual Birthday Dinner in October 2023, in the National Liberal Club. He discusses his year-long Classic Spring Season of Oscar Wilde’s works at the Vaudeville Theatre in London between 2017 and 2018, shares thoughts on Shakespeare and the proscenium arch, and reads excerpts from his new book, Astonish Me!, one chapter of which deals with the first night of The Importance of Being Earnest at the St James’s Theatre on 14 February 1895.
His talk is followed by a note of thanks from the society’s Robert Whelan, an author on theatre history and the editor of The Wildean.