by Rob CroserUkaria Cultural Centre / 119 Williams Rd, Mt Barker Summit
Sunday June 17 @ 2.00
London. 1895.
Poet, novelist, playwright, wit and raconteur, Oscar Wilde, is the most famous man in London. The author of The Picture of Dorian Gray, as well as the children’s stories, The Happy Prince and The Selfish Giant, he also has two hit plays running in London at the same time – An Ideal Husband, and the world’s most perfect comedy – glitteringly witty The Importance of Being Earnest. Oscar is fêted in society, comfortably married, and the father of two young sons. But, he is also desperately in love with the beautiful, but dangerously unstable, Lord Alfred Douglas (nicknamed “Bosie”), youngest son of the Marquess of Queensberry. Outraged at the gossip circulating in London, the “mad Marquess” begins a campaign of stalking and publicly vilifying Wilde. Finally goaded by Bosie, Wilde brings an action for criminal libel against Queensberry, which backfires, and places Wilde in the dock – an outcast from the society that has so recently adored him.
Drawn from original trial transcripts and newspaper reports, as well as Wilde’s letters, and the letters and diaries of his friends and enemies, Rob Croser’s script presents – in the authentic voices of the people speaking them – the glory and tragedy of Wilde’s extraordinary rise and fall.