In 1998, Dean Bryant went to see a production of Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband at Sydney’s Lyric Theatre – the first theatre show staged at the newly opened venue.

“It was an English production that had been recast with predominately Australians. I just went along, I wasn’t even out of WAAPA yet, and I wanted to see what this new theatre was like,” he recalls. Expecting an old-fashioned play, he found himself gripped by the exciting story.

Bryant is now Associate Director at Melbourne Theatre Company with a raft of high-profile credits to his name, among them Born Yesterday, Skylight and Vivid White for MTC, and Sweet Charity, Little Shop of Horrors and Assassins for the Hayes Theatre Co. He is also the Worldwide Associate Director of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert – The Musical.

When MTC’s 2018 season was being planned, he read Wilde’s play again and was struck by how apt it seemed for today: “That sense of your reputation and how valuable it is to you, and how easily it can be destroyed, and that fear and terror that hits someone when they realise that all the methodical...