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Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde
by Diversionary Theatre
Reviewed by
Carolyn
Passeneau  Having seen Gross
Indecency: The 3 Trials of Oscar Wilde at the Diversionary
Theatre at the January 18th
Opening and being thoroughly impressed by what I experienced as a disturbing, mind-boggling
play in a grippingly intense production, what, you might ask, has taken me so
long to share my thoughts on this show, now in the final scheduled weeks of
production? Well. . . my mind
has been boggling!
Is theatre allowed to entertain, bemuse, and upset your inner applecart all in the course of a few hours? Mr. Wilde might demurely say “life should be no less.” As a young girl, English teachers told me that Oscar Wilde wrote good prose, poetry and plays. The playwright was incidental to the play it seemed. Some of his “stuff” was unmemorable required reading that I suffered through in my early teens. Yawn. The man and his writing only became interesting to me when I saw an old black-and-white film starring Robert Morley on the tube one long, hot summer many, many years ago. As Wilde, Morley played a privately affable family man whose attentive affection for a young man trifled with his witty, often annoying public persona. His public persona took center stage in London media when he filed a lawsuit that resulted in three trials that ended his family life, career, and health. The final scene of his self-imposed exile to Paris is one of a drunken, desolate and aging dandy on the edge of madness. That scene won my young girl’s sympathy and heightened my sense of societal injustices. English teachers wouldn’t go into “it” though, so anything truly meaningful and forward-thinking about his work remained a bit of a mystery. Then --- nothing. Years went by. Nay, decades went by! Seasons, life-styles, studies, cities, and countries filled my landscape. On the wake of having seen Travesties (by Tom Stoppard and co-directed by Rosina Reynolds and Sean Murray in conjunction with The Importance of Being Earnest) at North Coast Rep this past summer and a small abridged musical performance of The Importance of Being Earnest produced by The Vantage Theatre shortly thereafter, the opportunity to see Gross Indecency: The 3 Trials of Oscar Wilde was irresistible. Morley’s hysterically distressed laughter at fade-out from decades ago played over and over in my mind’s eye. The man whose career and reputation was ruined in the late nineteenth century, it appears, has become something of a martyr or prophet for the twenty-first century? Given that the play is a composite of documents from the trials, memoirs, and journalism of Wilde’s time, my curiosity was further fueled by question marks about whether the director and actors could breathe life into the characters and create engrossing drama? You have my resounding YES in the first paragraph! Director Rosina Reynolds harnesses all the passion and devastation from England’s “trial of the 19th century” and releases it on David Weiner’s London Music Hall set complete with shell-hooded foot-lights and richly scarlet draperies. Gross Indecency opens with an innocuous production number of gentlemen whom Liam M. O’Brien decks out in the coat-and-tails, top hats and canes of high society – the “opening act” for the man author Moisés Kaufman refers to as “the first performance artist.” Dandyish-clad in a grape-hued cutaway, vest and shimmering ascot, Oscar Wilde makes his entrance charming the court and gallery (audience) alike with his handsomely confident and stylish presence. Farhang Pernoon delivers a devilishly bemused Oscar basking in his total command of language’s subtleties and his charismatic celebrity. He controls with presence and with language. In contrast, the defendant in the first trial who then becomes Oscar’s nemesis in the second and third trials, the Marquis of Queensbury, in a brutish and brooding performance by Douglas L. Ireland, doggedly discovers and controls with facts. Angelo D’Agostino-Wilimek as the Marquis’ son and Wilde’s lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, displays many of his father’s characteristics -- brutishly involving Wilde with “rent boys”, scornful of his father, and doggedly persistent in egging Wilde to revenge against his father -- while also convincingly revealing a deep affection for Wilde. The dynamics of this triangle seem to lie at the heart of Wilde’s eventual disgrace, imprisonment, and ultimate exile. Clearly, Wilde could have escaped imprisonment by not drawing attention to himself through a lawsuit he could not honestly win, by not allowing himself to be drawn into the feud between father and son, and eventually by fleeing to the continent which he had ample opportunity to do. The implications are clear that his love for Lord Douglas is like the image that we are given in the end when Jennifer Setlow’s haunting search lights freeze Wilde’s distraught face like a deer caught in headlights. Notable supporting performances by Karl Backus as the Marquis’ performance-grounding barrister and John Martin as Wilde’s long-time friend and barrister who totally believed in Wilde’s veracity were augmented by multi-roles including George Bernard Shaw, Moisés Kaufman, Queen Victoria and “rent boys” played by Vincent Smetana, Wes Culwell, Devlin Dolan, and Robert Borzych. Do I want to look at this poignant and moving drama politically? I tried. There are a lot of reasons why the laws which sent Oscar Wilde to prison for two years are unjust. For years, I thought that he was imprisoned because he was a homosexual. After seeing Gross Indecency, however, I wrestle with his perjury in initiating a lawsuit against the Marquis which would have imprisoned the Marquis for writing a true statement. So, I am still struggling with the truth. Perhaps, Wilde says it best: “The truth is rarely pure and never simple.” Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, 1895, Act I -- Carolyn Passeneau
Farhang Pernoon (Oscar Wilde) John Martin (Edward Clarke, defense attorney) Karl Backus(Edward Carson, prosecuting attorney) Douglas Ireland (Queensberry) Angelo D’Agostino-Wilimeck (Alfred Douglas) Robert Borzych, Wes Culwell, Devlin Dolan and Vincent Smetana as the four narrators who weave the story together. The
ARTISTIC Staff Scenic Design. . . . . . David Weiner. Costume Design. . . . Liam O’Brien. Lighting Design. . . . . Jennifer Setlow. Sound Design. . . . . . Paul Peterson.
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