Journeying to an out of town venue to see this one-man show about Oscar Wilde certainly proves to be worthwhile and St Margaret’s Church a delightful setting. The red performance area framed by a stone archway works well, especially with the Burne-Jones stained-glass windows providing a splendid background.
The show has been created by Leslie Clack who also guides the audience through the story of Wilde’s life, acting out incidents and performing extracts from Wilde’s work along the way.
Arriving in London from Ireland he set out to shock, declaring if he cannot be famous then he will be notorious. Later events prove him to have been both – his Green Carnation period, where he was feted by society and scored success with his plays, was replaced by the subsequent trials, imprisonment and self-exile in France.
Clack proves to be an amiable raconteur as well as a fine actor. He tells the story in an easy manner and switches effortlessly into different characters. The chilling duologue between Herod and Salome, in the original French, is contrasted with the immortal classic interview between Lady Bracknell and Mr Worthing – complete with shades of Dame Edith Evans.
His performance of the final scene from The Picture Of Dorian Gray was chilling. Equally dramatic was the cross-examination by Edward Carson which led to Wilde’s flippancy and subsequent two-year incarceration with hard labour. Whilst there he wrote De Profundis and the Ballad Of Reading Goal, both of which were beautifully recited.
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