Wilde Without the Boy solo dramatisation of De Profundis and The Ballad of Reading Gaol, a great double-bill.
Wilde Without the Boy at the Burton Taylor Studio, Oxford Playhouse
from Wednesday, July 17to Friday 19
By Jon Lewis
Speaking Love’s Name
Gareth Armstrong’s 2015 play Wilde Without the Boy, written for actor Gerard Logan, is a solo dramatisation of De Profundis, Oscar Wilde’s letter to his lover Lord Alfred Douglas, nicknamed Bosie, written in the final months of Wilde’s imprisonment for the crime of gross indecency in early 1897, and The Ballad of Reading Gaol, written later in the year when Wilde was in exile in France and Italy, about the hanging of a fellow prisoner a year earlier.
While watching Logan’s moving performance, the impression of Wilde’s generosity and openness as a person and writer comes across strongly.
Both pieces are intensely personal with a fascinating balance of prose and poetry. Armstrong and Logan have edited De Profundis so that it loses passages that are repetitive, but introduces contextual scenes about the trial judge, Justice Wills, sentencing Wilde, the royal coat of arms projected onto the back wall.
A scene where the prosecutor, GF Gill questions a key witness, Charles Parker, reveals how Wilde broke the law. However, in the subsequent scene, Wilde rages that this evidence hides the real reason for his imprisonment. That reason is Wilde’s attempt to put Bosie’s father in prison, which he failed to do, and Bosie’s father ‘turned the tables on me, and had me in prison, has me there still … that is why people despise me’.
Wilde shows no anger at Bosie – it’s more regret and depression at being made a bankrupt, with the prospect of eternal debts owing to Bosie’s family. He feels sympathy for his accuser for having lost another son who died.
He reminisces about his time in Oxford, and the early phases of his relationship with Bosie after the younger man was being blackmailed for writing a letter. De Profundis is the story of a love affair gone wrong, one-sided, with a bitter conclusion.
The Ballad of Reading Gaol, recited after the interval with a music soundtrack (composer, Simon Slater) interspersed with clinks, clangs, and horror effects like those in Logan’s ghost story performances, is an iconic critique of the cruelty of the late-Victorian justice system.
A great double-bill.