OSCAR WlLDE'S first-staged play (1892) is woven of two quite disparate theatrical threads. One is a gleeful epigrammatic satire of a wickedly soulless society. The other is neither more nor less than a romantic melodrama in which an idealistic young wife is tempted away from her husband because she cannot fathom the nature of his relationship with a mysterious "other" woman - the very woman who eventually saves young Lady Windermere from destroying both her reputation in that wicked society and her loving life. Alan Stanford's new production for the Gate takes what, to this reviewer, is a daringly original line in apparently trying to separate the two threads by giving the occupants of society an air of slightly over- the-top caricature while the protagonists of the melodrama are invested with an almost over-the-top air of wilful innocence.

So marked are the differences of characterisation between the two groups that it is almost possible to detect the slide of certain characters from wickedness to innocence, or vice versa, by changes in their acting style.

It does not quite work out consistently (if only because the author was purposefully not quite consistent in his delineations of character), but it provides quite a few theatrical surprises along the way which succeed in refreshing a very well-known text. Among the irredeemable, and very funny, caricatures of "wickedness" are Philip O'Sullivan's languid Dumby, Mark O'Halloran's gauche Australian Hopper, Tom Hickey's doting Lord Augustus, Emily Nagle's dim Lady Agatha and, above all, Pat Kinevane's sinuously foppish Cecil Graham. Robert O'Mahoney's Lord Darlington starts out apparently wicked and ends up seemingly innocent, while Susan FitzGerald's determined Duchess of Berwick somehow bridges the gap between the two styles.

Olwen Fouere's mysterious Mrs Erlynne necessarily slips from one style to the other and back again, while Hilary Reynolds's touching Lady Windermere and Michael James Ford's lovingly thick-headed Lord Windermere remain irretrievably innocent throughout. Bruno Schwengel's stylishly shapeless settings and Jacqueline Kobler's spectacularly effective costumes are cast in the mode of the Forties (was that the last decade in this century when innocence could survive in a wicked world?) and everything is well lit by Rupert Murray. It all makes for an enlivening and entertaining evening of good theatre.