Oscar Wilde

Synopsis

A musical celebrating the 150th anniversary of Oscar Wilde's birth. A musical about the final six years in the tragic life of the celebrated playwright. By the early 1890s. the Dublin-born wit, raconteur and author had become the darling of the West End stage through A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest, with several successful shows running concurrently. But his spectacular fall from grace, engineered by the Marquess of Queensberry, was swift, catastrophic and devastating. Brutalised by his time in jail, Oscar travelled to France, never to return or be allowed to see his young sons. Even a continuing dalliance with Queensberry's dilletante son, Lord Alfred Douglas, cannot save the doomed literary giant...

Our Review:

20 October 2004

What could be more fitting? A show about one Irish wit, whose 150th anniversary this happens to be, reopens the theatre dedicated to another. But somehow I don't think George Bernard Shaw, music reviewer and playwright, would have been too complimentary about Mike Read's musical dealing with the vilification of his compatriot, the flamboyant Oscar.

Let's start with the good news. The Shaw Theatre in Euston, then attached to St Pancras library, put on some earnest work in the 1970s and '80s. In its place there is now a hotel and conference centre-cum-theatre, a revived Shaw, which is part of a new company, Off West End Theatres. It's a nice enough auditorium, with good sightlines, and theatres less well-placed have made themselves indispensable, but why is the stage lighting so poor? Why is there a sense of make-do-and-mend with a bland Peter Blake as Oscar coping with a mic that goes from boom to zero? Let's hope the technical resources improve with use.

The show itself...

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Latest User Review

195.93.34.14) - 10 November 2004:

I've heard through a very good source that the actors haven't been paid yet. I think there's a story in that in itself. Would love to hear their views on the show, Mike Read and not being paid!!!!!!!!!!!!...

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