Review: Butterfield 8 captures humor and poignancy of Oscar Wilde's 'Lady ...

Oscar Wilde, the world's prototype media superstar, delighted in nothing more than wretched excesses of all kinds and thumbing his nose, quite publicly, at Victorian England's upper crust.

This is demonstrated gleefully in "Lady Windermere's Fan," being presented by Concord's Butterfield 8 Theatre Company in a production that is both wildly funny and surprisingly touching. It's a knife-edged comedy of manners that points out the era's inequities between men and women in matters of the heart (inequities that seem to still exist in a greater or lesser degree).

The story is set on Lady Windermere's (Becky Potter) 21st birthday, when she comes to suspect her husband, Lord Windermere (Matthew Gardner), is cheating on her. The news is presented to her a couple of times, first by an admirer, Lord Darlington (Edwin Peabody), and later by the delightfully catty Duchess of Berwick (Beth Chastain).

To make matters worse, the good lord demands that the alleged other woman, Mrs. Erlynne (Kerry Gudjohnsen), be invited to the birthday party that evening. Lady Windermere later confronts her hubby with evidence that he has been dropping large bundles of cash on Erlynne. He refuses to tell her why and this pretty much ices up both the party and their relationship.

This was the first highly successful play for Wilde, who was already a well-regarded author and lecturer in England, Europe and the United States, where he charmed and shocked the public with his flamboyant dress and manner and the towering ego that kept him in the public eye.

Although he wrote his most successful plays, particularly "The Importance of Being Earnest," after "Windermere," his fortunes went rapidly downhill after its 1892 debut. He was convicted of "gross indecency" with young men, and imprisoned. He died penniless in Paris in 1900.

It's difficult to watch "Windermere" without feeling some sadness over the fate of Wilde. And you can't help but believe his plays like "Windermere" and his public pronouncements about the Victorian lifestyle were as much responsible for his fate as his private life.

It's hard not to wish there had been more output from Wilde. Still, what we have is remarkable and wonderfully written, and offers some great opportunities for performers and theater companies.

Potter, for example, is incredible in her role as Lady Windermere. The role allows her a range of emotion, from comedy -- which she performs wonderfully in tandem with Peabody -- to drama as she reacts to the mess her life has suddenly become.

I Have Crust Inside My Nose

On Monday afternoon he has, probably from the prosecutor's court, according to the CSU board meeting someone told what it blooms: the first government investigation, then a debate about the lifting of his immunity and then a process at the end of his line of defense pitted to have forged not aware, nothing is left. Therefore pulled the ripcord Guttenberg. In this connection, the resignation, after days of ignoring so hastily, almost like an escape. The SPD parliamentarian Karl Lauterbach had been suspected in the taz newspaper last week that Guttenberg will fall on courts. "If action is brought for infringement of copyright, again the deception is on the agenda. Guttenberg, the question of whether he lied, not going," says Lauterbach. The foresight, the Chancellor was not. Finally. The Blender is gone. And has pulled even finish the mask. As he allotted after a brief confession own weaknesses, the blame for his departure, the media, that was the Baron at its best. He could not bear it longer alleged that he and not his proteges in the focus of media attention. He wanted to only carry the three dead soldiers to the grave before he acts accordingly. It could bring tears to come with so much disinterestedness, you would not get angry until white hot - because not a word of it is true what Mr. and from there by himself is to justify why he needed two weeks in order to connect. He did not want to bury in silence and then resign. He did not simply admit that he alone has brought down and at least a temporary end to his political career was inevitable. Angela Merkel has tried out of pure power politics, to use the immensely popular values of the young, dashing Bavaria for themselves. You, the doctor of physics, who is married to a professor who should have known better. She who shall work together with their Minister Annette Schavan love to the word education in the Republic of mouth, should have seen that it is not a human being can split into a discredited scientist and an outstanding federal politicians. Merkel has disgraced not only of importance to them as educated elite forever. She did not leave less than the moral positioning the base of the conservative values of consensus. This harms the Chancellor not only itself the end, the entire CDU was rocked in the past three weeks to its foundations.

Crust & Spray, Gross Stuff in Your Eyes, Ears, Nose, and Throat

Medical record

Guide to the examination of the throat, nose and ear, for senior students and junior practitioners

Journal of the American Medical Association

Principles of Nasal Reconstruction