There is really only one reason for going to see this revival of Oscar Wilde's classic comedy of manners. That reason is Kate O'Mara.

Her quiet entrance in Act Two lifts the entire show.

She is the only member of the cast to act and speak naturally and to show any emotion and character.

With quiet authority, she stamps her name on the production, vastly overshadowing her colleagues and proving she is truly an actress of note.

She plays Mrs Arbuthnot, mother of Gerald Arbuthnot and former lover of Lord Illingworth.

Gerald is Lord Illingworth's illegitimate son, whom he abandoned at birth.

In order to give his son status and a future, Lord Illingworth offers him the position of private secretary. But Mrs Arbuthnot is adamant that Gerald will not take the job - she wants nothing from her former beau.

Wilde has great fun in mocking the strictures of society and the morals they strive to preserve. The one-liners are prolific and the laughs are many.

Among his best-known quips are: "Nothing succeeds like excess" and (on the art of fox-hunting) "The unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable."

The problem is that, until Ms O'Mara turns up, Wilde's lines are declaimed, not particularly well, by the remainder of the cast who politely but shallowly utter their lines and then wait for the audience to recognise them and react with laughter.

Some plays are born to be declaimed but this one isn't. This comes across as a group of stand-up comedians doing a show rather than a bunch of actors breathing life into something.

Somewhere along the line, the company has lost its way.

True, Catherine Kanter, Josephine Tewson and Deborah Grant all have a considerable presence but as Lady Caroline Pontefract, Lady Huntstanton and Mrs Allenby, they have become rather wooden stereotypes, playing to the front.

Ms O'Mara is different. She dazzles and delights, cries and sobs and becomes the epitome of the wronged woman.

Her bitterness is palpable, her voice cracks with hurt. She is fully alive to everything around her, to her past and to her probable future.

The sets, too, are a bit of a mess: The autumnal backdrop to Act One looks like a Jackson Pollock painting.

But I suppose the core of Wilde's plays are his epigrams and they remain funny and delightful after more than 100 years.

So maybe there are two reasons to see this production.