Politics, parties and plenty of verbal pyrotechnics are on the bill this summer as Dublin's Abbey Theatre stages a new production of Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband.

The play charts rising politician Sir Robert Chiltern's desperate efforts to conceal a dirty secret from the past, aided by his uninspired but charming friend Lord Goring.

One of Wilde's sharpest social satires, the play has enjoyed huge stage popularity as well as spawning a Hollywood movie in 1999 starring Rupert Everett.

The Dublin production is directed by Wilde stalwart Neil Bartlett, who received rave reviews for his treatment of another of the playwright's classics - The Picture of Dorian Gray - while head of the Lyric theatre in Hammersmith.

It runs from August 14th to September 27th.

If you can't catch the Dublin production, Cardiff's New Theatre is also showing an adaptation under the direction of acclaimed dramatist Sir Peter Hall, former director of London's National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company. It runs from September 22nd to 27th.