Stone Soup opens 2025 with Oscar Wilde’s classic farce, filled with mistaken identities, wordplay, and social commentary on the absurdity of manners and morality.

Two charming young ladies—sophisticated Gwendolen from the city and naive Cecily from the country—are in love with Earnest Worthing. But there is no such person as Earnest Worthing! Gwendolen thinks Jack is Earnest, and Cecily thinks Algy is Earnest. Each girl swears that she could never love a man who wasn’t named Earnest. In the midst of all this confusion comes Lady Bracknell, who doesn’t like the idea of anybody loving anybody.

It sounds like a big mess, but Wilde unwinds this knotty affair into one of the favorite comedies of English literature.