No 51 : March 2010

We apologise for the gap in production since number 50.

RECENT, CURRENT & FORTHCOMING PRODUCTIONS

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This page covers Wilde and Wilde-related theatre productions, compiled from material gathered by the Editorial team for our three Theatre Editors, Helena Gurfinkel, Gwen Orel and Michelle Paull. For an essay by Patricia Flanagan Behrendt setting out how we can develop our engagement with Wilde theatre beyond our simple record of the productions, click .

French productions are chiefly covered in our sister publication, rue des beaux arts

Coverage of other productions of fin-de-siècle interest, previously on this page under the heading ‘Beyond the Wilderness’, are now to be found on our Theatre page, UPSTAGE. This is being developed for launch as an independent journal.

We hope readers will help provide information. Productions are given as a rolling list, new ones being added each month, old ones being removed after a period of exposure. Offers to review are always welcome.

We are also creating a scenography of productions. This will be an immense task, and probably will never be completed, but a start has been made. Click the sunflower

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Argentina		Germany
Australia		Ireland
Canada		Italy
Denmark		Scotland
England		Switzerland
France		The United States of America

ARGENTINA

The Canterville Ghost, in a musical version directed by Pepe Cibrian, was produced at the Teatro IFT, Buenos Aires 9th, 10th, 16th & 17th November 2009.

AUSTRALIA

At the University of New South Wales, Sydney :

CANADA

The 2010 season at Niagara-on-the-Lake includes An Ideal Husband, directed by Jackie Maxwell (‘When her husband behaves badly, should a wife always stand by her man? The quest for power and ambition eventually catch up with a much-admired politician one night at an elegant party. Here, a mysterious woman produces a letter which reveals a past misdeed and a choice must be made between public scandal and the private shame of his wife. A perfect mix of Wilde wit and intrigue.’). In repertory 9th April to 31st October.

DENMARK

‘That Theatre Company’ is an English language company based in Copenhagen. In October 2009 the company produced Neil Bartlett’s In Extremis. For a video clip, click the image below.

ENGLAND

Death in Genoa, a new webcast play about Oscar Wilde.

Death in Genoa is a new play by Thomas Wright, author of Oscar’s Books and many articles on Wilde. The play is about Wilde’s visit to Constance’s grave, and the time he spent in the Ligurian city of marble palaces over the sea. Simon Callow plays Oscar Wilde/Sebastian Melmoth, and Samuel Barnett (‘The History Boys’) is Omero, a young Genoese man Wilde picks up, and who acts as his guide to the city. Blake Ritson (‘The League of Gentlemen’) plays the tour guide Carlo Bazzani, and Marcello Magni (founder of the ‘Theatre de Complicite’) is Giuseppe Narizzano, a gardener at Staglieno Cemetery.  Freddie Machin plays the Guide in Art Museum/Flower Seller/ Train Announcer and Carys Lewis the women in the tram. The drama is based on fact, but it is a work of fiction. 

The play was ‘broadcast’ on the website of The Independent newspaper 4th December, and it was downloadable for an original period of two weeks and then extended at http://www.independent.co.uk/drama. It was subsequently published by the Oscar Wilde Society, from whom it can be ordered. At time of writing (4th March 2010) it can still be heard by clicking here.

Death in Genoa is an imaginative dramatic reconstruction of the time Wilde spent in Genoa in February 1899, when he visited the grave of his wife, Constance - a poignant and little-known episode in his life.

A ‘Made in Manchester/Dark Smile’ Production, it is directed by Joyce Branagh and Neil Gardner, and produced by Ashley Byrne and Iain Mackness.  The music was composed by Rebecca Aplin.

For further information please contact Ashley Byrne on 07702 155397 or go to www.madeinmanchester.tv or www.darksmile.co.uk.

The play is served by two trailers, downloadable to Realplayer) which we have been given kind permission to place on our website for our readers. Click here and here.

Thomas Wright provides this note for THE OSCHOLARS.

‘Death in Genoa’ is based on the few facts that have survived about Wilde’s visit to his wife’s grave in Genoa on 26 February 1899, and about his brief stay in the Ligurian city. Most of the historical information we have is derived from Wilde’s letters.

However, wary of Wilde’s own strictures against realism, and his well-known abhorrence of ‘mere facts’, I have tried to reshape the raw matter of history at every turn in the drama.  In this way, I hoped to confer on the historical facts a distinct and attractive outline, and to broach a number of philosophical and artistic themes.  With these ends in mind, I have altered the cast and the plot of Wilde’s ‘real’ Genoese adventure.

In my play, Didaco and Edoardo Rolla (two young men the historical Wilde picked up in Genoa in February 1899) have amalgamated into the figure of Omero, and my Wilde journeys from Genoa to Paris, after visiting Staglieno, rather than on to Switzerland as Wilde did in ‘real’ life.  Most of the details of the play are in fact my invention – the character Carlo Bazzani is pure fiction, and I have imagined the course of Wilde’s desultory odyssey through Genoa, to and from Staglieno Cemetery - a journey about which nothing is known.

In the interests of artistic effect, and internal coherence, the play also contains a number of anachronisms.  I make no apology for these, other than to quote the words Wilde himself used when he defended his fictional, dramatic version of the Salomé story against a writer who questioned its historical accuracy. ‘That poor fool Gourmont thinks he knows more than everyone else.’ Wilde said, ‘But his truth is only the truth of a professor.  I prefer my truth, which is the truth of a dream. Between the two truths, the falser is the truer’.

Eleanor Margolies writes:

Puppetcraft performed ‘The Selfish Giant’ at Jackson’s Lane theatre in Highgate, London, on 22nd November.

Hulviz Operatic Society performed ‘The Canterville Ghost’ at the Bob Hope Theatre, Eltham, London, 26th - 28th November.

Contributed by Danielle Guérin

When Henri Met Oscar by Michael Gannon is described as a ‘bitter sweet play [which] tells of the time when Henri Toulouse-Lautrec was a friend of Oscar Wilde at the height of their fame and in the second act, of their fall from favour’. Showing 17th-29th November 2009 at the Baron’s Court Theatre, West Kensington, London. Tickets £12 (£10 conc). Box office: 020 8932 4747. We apologise for the wretched quality of the reproductions of the poster.

See also D.C. Rose : ‘Some Trouble with Henri or the Difficulty of Knowing Lautrec’, The Wildean 27, July 2005.

FRANCE

The flurry of Wilde plays in Paris is reported in our sister journal, Rue des Beaux Arts, also on line at www.oscholars.com. Here we add for the record that the first ever play-reading for members of the Oxford University Society of Paris and their guests took place on Friday 29th January 2010 at the Royal British Legion, 28 rue des Acacias. The play chosen was A Woman of No Importance.

GERMANY

Contributed by Isa Bickmann

An Ideal Husband plays at the English Theatre, Frankfurt-am-Main, 26th February – 18th April 2010

IRELAND

The Dublin Gay Theatre Festival Winter Festival ran from 24th to 31st October, and although there were no Wilde-related events, the image of Wilde displayed on the summer festival banner was again used.

ITALY

Rita Severi writes

On Thursday, 6th August 2009, in the splendid setting of the Renaissance centre of Carpi (about 15 km from Modena), Italy, the performing artist, Carlo Sabbadini, staged his one-man parody of Wilde’s Salomé with the title, Treading Ironically on Oscar Wilde’s Salomé (Camminata ironica su Salomé di Oscar Wilde). The actor dressed like a character from one of Beckett’s plays, literally strutting all the time on a bare stage, delivered the speeches, that he had adapted and translated from Wilde’s French into the local dialect (carpigiano). The whole play was up-dated to ridicule the present political situation in Italy. For instance, Herod was a caricature of Berlusconi whose lascivious womanizing induces him to lust over the Lolita-like Salomé, while Herodias encourages her daughter and John the Baptist expresses his opposition by yelling invectives. Sabbadini interprets all these roles simultaneously, moving and gesticulating and talking with different voices and different intonations with the ability of the mature, versatile, “nonsensical” showman.

SCOTLAND

Emily Alder writes

A rainy August nonetheless did little to dampen the sparkle of Wilde dramatisations in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Performances included Lady Windermere’s Fan by amateur dramatics society the Chelsfield Players, Rocket Theatre’s Oscar Wilde’s Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime, and Keith Drinkel’s one-man performance of The Picture of Dorian Gray.

As well as direct adaptations and new productions, the characteristic Fringe range of comic twists and cameo appearances of literary figures sallied forth in Vice Versa’s gender-swapping The Importance of Being Earnestina, and Poet’s Corner by Tea for Ten Theatre Company: in Westminster Abbey, Wilde, Byron, and other celebrated wordsmiths “congregate and wile away the centuries, awaiting the next party”. Reviewed positively, both shows had a successful run; Oscar Wilde and the Men of the Hour, however, drew poor reviews, and it’s possible to see why from the group’s own Fringe programme description: “History’s most fearsome and celebrated authors join forces to travel time and bring smite to the schemes of the diabolical Time Nazis”. Case rests!

SWITZERLAND

Bunbury (The Importance of being Earnest)

Director: Katharina Rupp. Cast: Max Merker, Aaron Hitz, Barbara Grimm, Mario Gremlich, Matthias Britschgi, Matthias Schoch, Daniel Hajdu. Theater Biel Solothurn 4th, 12th and 29th November.

Bunbury (The Importance of being Earnest)

Director: Helmut Förnbacher. Cast: Helmut Förnbacher, Sylvia Bossart, Sibylle Henning, Lothar Hohmann, Tanja Horisberger, Barbara Knüsel-Schwager, David Köhne, Stefan Uehlinger, Eugen Urfer. Produktion: Helmut Förnbacher Theater Company. Förnbacher Theater, Basel. May 2010.

Salome

Musikdrama in einem Aufzug von Richard Strauss. Text vom Komponisten nach Oscar Wildes gleichnamiger Dichtung in deutscher Übersetzung von Hedwig Lachmann. In deutscher Sprache mit Übertitelung. Musikalische Leitung: Christoph von Dohnányi. Director: Sven-Eric Bechtolf. Bühnenbild: Rolf Glittenberg. Kostüme: Marianne Glittenberg. Lichtgestaltung: Jürgen Hoffmann. Besetzung: Gun-Brit Barkmin, Cornelia Kallisch, Egils Silins, Rudolf Schasching, Christoph Streh, Michael Laurenz Müller, Boguslaw Bidzinski, Peter Sonn, Martin Zysset, Reinhard Mayr, Tomasz Slawinski, Kresimir Strazanac, Valeriy Murga und Morgan Moody. Mit dem Chor und dem Orchester der Oper Zürich. Produktion: Opernhaus Zürich. Im Rahmen der Zürcher Festspiele. June 2010

The Importance of Being Earnest

In English. Director: Peter Joucla. Production: Tour de Force Theatre. Theater Winterthur November 2009

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Nach dem Roman von Oscar Wilde. In englischer Sprache. Regie: Paul Stebbings. Produktion: The American Drama Group Europe. Schaffhausen Stadttheater & TaK Theater am Kirchplatz, Schaan. March 2010

Das Gespenst von Canterville

Director: Elisabeth Gabriel. Costumes: Marion Steiner. Production: Theater St. Gallen. St. Gallen Theater, large stage 28th, 30th November; 2nd, 6th, 9th, 16th, 20th, 24th, 26th December; 1st, 3rd, 13th, 31st January 2010.

«Wenn es dem goldenen Mädchen gelingt, dass es den Sünder zum Beten bringt, wenn auf dürrem Ast die Blüte erscheint und ein Kind den Sünder beweint, dann wird es im Hause wieder still und Friede zieht ein in Canterville.»

Bittersüss – aus dem Leben des Oscar Wilde

Ein Kammermusical in vier Akten nach einer Idee von Cornelia Lindner. Mit: Siegfried Schmoll, Urs Rusterholz, Corinne Bloch, Lukas Schönenberger, Carmen Althaus, Kathrin Bögli, Diana Cocca und Cornelia Lindner. Band: Franziska Vontobel, Roman Bislin-Wild, Daniel Gfeller, Martin Frischknecht, Micael Dikantsa Louzolo. Text: Cornelia Lindner, Musik: Roman Bislin-Wild, Regie: Rico Lutz. Theater Rigiblick, Zürich, dates t.b.a.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

The Importance of Being Earnest

Directed by Irene Lewis, Centerstage The Pearlstone Theater - Baltimore, Maryland 7th October – 8th November.

Unusually, this production is backed by on-line dramaturgical material: http://www.centerstage.org/earnest/Digital-Dramaturgy.aspx. This includes a cast list illustrated not only with photographs but with costume designs.

The Importance of Being Earnest

Directed by Joe Dowling, Wurtele Thrust Stage Guthrie Theater - Minneapolis, Minnesota, 12th September – 8th November. The website gives much background material, including a number of short, downloadable video clips.

Hon. Gwendolen Fairfax

Heidi Armbruster

Rev. Canon Frederick Chasuble, D.D.

Richard S. Iglewski

Cecily Cardew

Erin Krakow

John (Jack) Worthing, J.P.

Nick Mennell

Lane / Merriman

Kris L. Nelson

Algernon Moncrieff

John Skelley

Lady Bracknell

Linda Thorson

Miss Laetitia Prism

Suzanne Warmanen

Director

Joe Dowling

Set Designer

Walt Spangler

Costume Designer

Mathew J. LeFebvre

Lighting Designer

Allen Lee Hughes

Sound Designer

Scott W. Edwards

Music Consultant

Adam Wernick

 Dramaturgy

Michael Lupu

Voice and Dialect Coach

Lucinda Holshue

Movement

Marcela Lorca

Production Stage Manager

Russell W. Johnson

Assistant Stage Managers

Michele Harms; Justin Hossle

Assistant Director

Dionne Laviolette

Ernest in Love

This musical version of The Importance of being Earnest was produced by the Irish Repertory Company, New York, 12th December 2009 to 31st January 2010.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Round House Theatre - Bethesda, Maryland; adapted by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and directed by Blake Robison. 9th September to 4th October 2009.

‘London 1988. A struggling artist paints a portrait of a handsome young friend. Upon seeing it, Dorian Gray strikes a Faustian bargain that allows his outward appearance to remain forever unchanged while the portrait reflects his true age and immorality. Plunging into a life of narcissism and depravity, he leaves those who love or befriend him either broken or dead before realizing that he has also destroyed himself. This striking adaptation by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa (The Velvet Sky, The Muckle Man) puts a provocative contemporary spin on Wilde’s scandalous thriller about a man who sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty.’

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