“Only the dead give up all their secrets,” reveals former fortune teller Mrs Robinson as she returns 100 years on from a meeting which may have changed a literary legend’s life for ever.
The reason why Oscar Wilde didn’t flee into exile after his Old Bailey defamation trial collapsed is one of the great Victorian mysteries – also tackled in David Hare’s current West End hit The Judas Kiss.
Rather than blame Wilde’s lover Bosie, Neil Bartlett’s play – written for the centenary of the wit’s death in 2000 – suggests a very different personal reason.
Set in real time, the fortune teller and the most talked about man in London battle to hide their true selves from each other, while revealing their thoughts to the audience during a consultation in Robinson’s apartments.
We hear about Mrs Robinson’s society ambitions and the tricks of her trade, while Wilde, played as a smooth devil-may-care man-about-town by Nigel Fairs, allows his mask to slip to the audience revealing his true fears.
When the prediction is finally read, we only need to see Suzanne Procter’s face as Mrs Robinson to know her true feelings.
As much as Bartlett’s brilliantly-written script, In Extremis is also about the well-judged reactions of the two performers.
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