The bare facts belong to literary history: Oscar Wilde, indomitable wit, distinguished playwright, poet, and novelist had one great love in his life: Lord Alfred Douglas, affectionately known as “Bosie.” Bosie is purported to be the inspiration for one of Wilde’s best-known and most popular works, The Picture of Dorian Gray. Sixteen years Wilde’s junior, Bosie was the object of Wilde’s love and lust for many years and was the impetus behind the famous legal hearings that landed Wilde in jail for the crime of sodomy.
Playwright Maxim Mazumdar brings alive these facts, and mines the relationship between the two men for thought-provoking dramatic fodder in Oscar Remembered, now being performed by Speaking Ring Theatre Company at the Theatre Building (an earlier incantation of the work was performed to critical raves by the Writers Theatre in Glencoe). Mazumdar, who died from AIDS a few years ago, at age 36, presents a competently structured portrait of the growth of the relationship between the two men, beginning with its inception and ending shortly after Wilde’s death in 1900. To tell his story, the playwright draws upon letters, Wilde’s own literary output, and historical accounts. The thing that sets this version apart is that it is told through the eyes of Bosie himself (portrayed by Aaron Cedolia), a man whose presence looms large in any account of Oscar Wilde’s life, but for whom history often has little to say. It’s a novel approach, and one for which the playwright was lauded during his brief life.
The dramatic structure, for the most part, succeeds in painting a compelling portrait of an artist and his paramour, and how a “love that dared not speak its name” was conducted at the end of the 19th century. What Mazumdar fails to supply the audience with is a real point of entry into Bosie’s psyche. Although we hear from him and watch as his mercurial moods change alternately from light to dark, there’s no connection with the audience. Mazumdar has chosen to make us eavesdroppers on a fascinating relationship, but we never get to enjoy the immediacy of true connection. The second act, also, does not fare as well as the first. It’s self indulgent, Bosie’s mourning and the decline of Oscar Wilde could have been conveyed more succinctly. The act tends to drag on with a reading of a long letter from Wilde and the entire text of his poem, “The Ballad of Reading Gaol.”
But overall, the playwright has provided us with a unique glimpse into history and the minefield of human emotion and love.
Speaking Ring’s production, on the other hand, leaves much to be desired. In a monologue show such as this one, everything rests on the performance of the lead (naturally). Aaron Cedolia chooses to interpret Bosie as a mincing queen most of the time, leaving us to wonder why a genius like Wilde would have fallen for such an effeminate twit. A more balanced, credible portrayal would have made the play a lot more compelling.