RELOCATING the Victorian social satire, Lady Windermere's Fan, to the Amalfi Coast of the 1930s transforms one of Oscar Wilde's lesser known plays into a sultry and sumptuous drama.

It gives the production team colourful outdoor sets in the market place or by the sea; sexy costumes are fully exploited and the foreign climes give a fantastic light with which to show these off. It may not enhance the riveting plot, but certainly does a lot for the mood.

The American Robert (Mark Umbers) and his wife Meg Windermere (Scarlett Johansson) are in the first flushes of love. Wed for just a year, they are the picture of marital bliss.

Holidaying in the Italian Riveria among the high society, the rumour mill starts whirring when Mrs Erlynne (Helen Hunt), a seductive woman of ill repute, moves into town and arouses suspicions after it appears that Robert Windermere is providing the older seductress with a weekly allowance.

Meanwhile, caddish young aristo Lord Darlington (Stephen Campbell Moore), in an attempt to seduce Meg, slyly arranges for her to find out. But not all is as it seems.

Hunt is superb as Mrs Erlynne who, despite a dark secret, has a wit and wisdom making her more honourable than the circle gawping and gossiping around her.

That is excepting the gentle Lord Augustus (Tom Wilkinson). At the opera they sit in the stalls, blissfully nonchalant about the chattering vultures in the box above. The story climaxes at Meg's 21st birthday party, for which she defiantly wears an uncharacteristically revealing dress and drinks far more champagne than she is used to.

Scenes like this, and those intimate bedroom moments, make re-inventing the classics worthwhile.

The other advantage is that the less formal language gives more opportunity for the characters to breathe rather than acting as voiceboxes for Wilde's radical opinions.

That said, many of his brilliant quotes are retained (as well as some from other plays and from Winston Churchill) usually in all-male scenes at the club where Lord Augustus's friends hold court.

While the mood stays light, the intrigue and drama prevail in this most watchable of period dramas. Wilde would definitely approve.

Alex Kasriel