It is light-hearted, accessible to nearly all ages and crackling with Oscar Wilde's most famous epigrams. The epigrams are perhaps both its beauty and its burden as they must be delivered sleekly within the context of the characters and the conversation but can jump out in bold-faced italics if the actors are not careful.
Some actors fare better than others with the brittle elegance of English style.
Gwendolyn and Cecily are standouts in the hands of Carole Healey and Kelley Dunn. Healey was stunning as the strident Polish female pilot in Misalliance and now is regal and crisp with effective, husky-voiced touches as Gwendolyn. One delight in London theatre is seeing drawing room comedy with excellent actors in minor roles. PTTP keeps up that tradition with the butlers in Earnest. In their brief moments together, Lane and Algernon emerge as the antecedents for Jeeves and Bertie Wooster in the later P.G. Wodehouse stories.