Fringe Theatre Review: Wilde Adventures

We look at some of the Oscar Wilde adaptations on show at this year's Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Feature by Neil Weaving | 27 Aug 2015

In 1897, while in prison on charges of 'gross indecency' – basically for being gay – Oscar Wilde composed what has become one of the most famous letters in the English language. De Profundis was sent to his sometime lover Lord Alfred 'Bosie' Douglas, whose father had been instrumental in Wilde's imprisonment, and who had neglected to send any correspondence to his former love. Gerard Logan's one-man show Wilde Without the Boy [★★★★★] is a detailed portrait of 'the love that dare not speak its name' and what it means to feel in an uncaring society. More specifically, it relates the fraught love between Wilde and Bosie, its collapse, and ultimately Wilde's own downfall.

The Oscar Wilde revealed by Logan's performance is at once arrogant and humble, perceptive and blind, strong and weak – a man of genuine foibles and human contradictions, played with sensitivity and charm. At times Wilde presents himself as one of his own characters, full of pithy ironies; at others, the mask drops completely, and we are left with one of the most frank explorations of an individual soul in the history of literature, and a captivating story of a precarious, perhaps mutually toxic, relationship, the internal pressures of which are only amplified by the massive external pressures from Bosie's influential family and from the homophobic state. Bringing such a thing to the stage could not have been easy but Logan makes it look like a doddle.

Incognito Theatre's adaptation of Dorian Gray [★★★★☆] uses a physical approach to spice up Wilde's novel. Each of the five actors stay on stage throughout the performance, with those whose characters are not in the scene staying on as a physical chorus to embellish the proceedings with gestures and layered vocals. These visuals can be striking – particularly those involving empty picture frames to represent the cursed painting, always a tricky thing to stage – and whispered vocalisations imbue certain scenes with a dash of Gothic flair.

The dialogue does well to capture the wit and vitality of the writing – the keystone of Wilde's work – and Dorian and Basil are particularly well cast, but structural problems inherited from the source material are exacerbated by thinning out the story to fit in the space of an hour, leaving the narrative feeling somewhat truncated. Wilde's tale, like the Faust myth it is modelled on, is one with a beginning and an ending but not much middle, and much of what there should be is cut for time from this version. This means that the ending comes as a surprise not because of any twist, but just because it seems to come suddenly out of nowhere.

In contrast, Early Grave, Fashionably Late [★★★☆☆] has all too much middle. Christopher Samuel Carroll's flabby one-man storytelling project starts strong, with a compelling voice and a character perfectly matched to the odd Arthur Conan Doyle centre venue, which is less overtly theatrical than most Fringe venues and more just a really plush room. Unfortunately, the narrative quickly gets bogged down in needless meandering, becoming a convoluted murder-mystery(ish) intrigue involving Oscar Wilde himself and a few politicians involved in the late-19th century effort for Irish home rule. Carroll certainly has a knack for storytelling, but his gifts would be more suited to a story more worth telling.


Wilde Without the Boy, Assembly Hall, until 31 Aug, 11:00AM, £8.00

Dorian Gray, Pleasance Dome, until 31 Aug, 4:00PM, £8.50/£7.50

Early Grave, Fashionably Late, Arthur Conan Doyle Centre, until 29 Aug (not 23), 1:00PM, £10.00/£8.00

http://theskinny.co.uk/festivals/edinburgh-fringe/