The respectable Sir Robert Chiltern is a successful Government minister, well-off and with a loving wife. All is threatened when the conniving Mrs. Cheveley appears with damning evidence of a past misdeed and threatens blackmail. His best friend comes to his aid – and through a number of comedic entanglements – tries to lead Robert and his family out of harm and disgrace. But there are others who have desires and ambitions all their own. While written in 1895, underneath a surface of frivolity and appearances, there lies countless elements of today’s current times and affairs: feminism, blackmail, political corruption, morality and mistrust, the psychology of love and forgiveness, are all served up with the effervescent Wilde wit, where in a course of just twenty-four hours, this cocktail mix of characters learns what it means to be “an ideal husband.”