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Stars explained: * A production of no real merit
with failings in all areas. ** A production showing evidence of not
enough time or effort, or even talent, and which never breathes any real
life into the piece – or a show lumbered with a terrible script. *** A
good enjoyable show which might have some small flaws but has largely
achieved what it set out to do.**** An excellent show which shows a
great deal of work and stage craft with no noticeable or major
flaws.***** A four star show which has found that extra bit of magic
which lifts theatre to another plane. |
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Zofja Zolna, complete with quizzing glass, as society hostess Lady Mandrake welcoming Oscar Wilde. Pictures: Roy Palmer To meet Oscar Wilde
Hall Green Little Theatre
**** THESE days the word celebrity is much
overused; it seems to apply to anyone who has ever been on telly as well
as that strange breed who are famous for . . . well, nothing really,
famous merely for being famous. At the end of the 19th century it was Oscar Wilde who was the celebrity of the age, and for good reason. He was a poet, essayist
and wit who held court wherever he went, he was also a novelist, short
story and children’s fairy story writer and was the most popular
playwright of the time with productions such as
Lady Windermere’s Fan, A woman of no
importance and
An ideal husband
delighting audiences. His final triumph,
The Importance of Being Earnest,
was four days
Society hostesses vied
with each other to invite him to soirees, dinners, receptions . . . and
if successful in landing him, added To
meet Oscar Wilde in the corner of
invitations as a sort of badge of honour - and ensuring no invitee would
turn down the chance to meet such a glittering, flamboyant personality.
Norman Holland’s clever three-hander starts with
Wilde giving a lecture, a popular Victorian pursuit, to tell the story
of his life, but the tale is made real as key scenes are renacted. Jon Richardson perhaps lacks the arrogant
flamboyance and flair of the supremely confident Wilde at the peak of
his powers in the opening but when the inevitable sees Wilde first
demeaned in court and then incarcerated in jail Richardson comes into
his own, wearing Wilde’s anguish like a well-fitting cloak. A bleak
Victorian prison must have been Dante’s Inferno made flesh for a man
such as Wilde. And perhaps here it should be mentioned that the
theatrical gods who deserted Wilde have not been kind to Hall Green
either, with Andrew Cooley, who was to play all the male parts,
struggling through Saturday’s performance with a failing voice which had
faded completely by Monday which meant lighting operator Ros Davies
stepped in. Ros had been rehearsal prompt, so had some
knowledge of the play, but even so to step in at the last minute, a
woman to play all the men, with no time for a rehearsal, is the stuff of
nightmares. Inevitably it had to affect the dynamics of the play,
something that could not be avoided, and which, invariably, makes
reviewing difficult, but in truth she faced the challenge quite
magnificently with her script hidden in a ledger that served much
of the time as a prop. She had 13 roles to play from Lord Evelyn, who
organised the lecture to Lord Queensbury, who was to accuse him of
homosexuality leading to his dow Equally skilled in her multi-tasking of roles was Zofja Zolna who opened as the celebrated actress Miss Penelope Dyall and gave us society ladies, eager beaver female reporters, Wilde’s mother and his demoralised wife, Constance, a woman living with both Wilde’s homosexual infidelity and, subsequently, the shunning and pointed fingers of shame after his conviction for gross indecency. A euphemism for homosexuality, then a crime that shocked society and made those convicted a pariah. Zofja Zolna as Constance Wilde, who changed her name to Holland. His two sons, Cyril and Vyvyan, were never to see their father again. It is essentially a three hander, although Luke
Ellinor made a brief appearance as a newspaper boy, telling us to read
all about Wilde’s sensational trial, and director Amanda Grant has kept
the set down to a minimum, with characterisations achieved by change of
voice and bearing and modest accessories, such as a quizzing glass, or
fox stole, different hats or barristers and judges wigs. Based on fact Richardson shows us the descent of
one of the most famous literary figures in history from feted celebrity
to the shunned and shamed gay ex-con who was to write little more and
you are left to wonder what Wilde might have achieved had fate not
intervened. As Richardson’s Wilde said as he left jail when
told his sentence had been served “I fear it is just beginning.” Cooley may well return before the production ends
on 14 May but with a run though with Ros Davies now under their belts,
the cast and team have coped well with adversity and Plan B is up and
running to give an
Roger Clarke 09-05-16 Wilde’s story is one of a man destroying his life
by recklessly pursuing "the love that dare not speak its name" at a time
when homosexuality was both illegal and seen by society as an immoral
perversion. Wilde was infatuated with Lord Alfred Douglas, Bosie,
the handsome, spoiled, undergraduate son of the brutish Marquis of
Queensbury, he of the boxing rules. Bosie introduced Wilde to the world of gay prostitutes which were to be his eventual downfall. Queensbury warned Wilde off his son and when the affair continued he left a calling card at Wilde’s club accusing him of being a somdomite – spelling not being one of the Marquis’s strong points. It was four days after the phenomenal success of the opening night of The Importance of being Earnest in February 1895. Bosie saw a chance to
get at a father he disliked and cajoled a reluctant Wilde into suing for
libel, a hopeless course which only served to unleash Wilde’s secret
life of rent boys. The trial collapsed, the jury finding for Queensbury
after male prostitutes admitted sex with Wilde. Worse, their evidence
saw Wilde arrested and charged with gross indecency. Fifteen weeks after
the premiere of The Importance of
Being Earnest, Wilde was in jail. He was released on 18
May, 1897 and sailed directly to Paris, living under the name Sebastian
Melmoth, never to return to Britain. There he wrote
The Ballad of Reading Gaol
and De Profundis, a
50,000-word letter he had written,
more a treatise, to Bosie. It was not to be published in full until
1962. Wilde was to die on 30 November 1900 from
cerebral meningitis living in abject poverty in a dingy hotel room in
Paris, where he is buried with a later tomb designed by Sir Jacob
Epstein. He was 46. |
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old
when the Marquis of Queensbury set in motion the train of events which
were to destroy Wilde and see him jailed for two years with hard labour
for his homosexuality.
nfall
and Queensbury’s spoiled brat of a son Bosie; from convicts and prison
governors to barristers and judges, and she gave each one its own voice,
accent and demeanour.