And, yes, London was, that terrible spring, freezing; on the night that The Importance of Being Earnest opened, the Serpentine carried six inches of ice.
But as for this version of the story being “true”...well; no truth can be separated from the circumstances of its telling. A hundred years after his death, we find other truths in Wilde’s life and work than those found when he swore to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth in the dock at the Old Bailey. We flatter ourselves that we read his story very differently to the jury who found him guilty, or to the newspaper editors who boosted their circulation on the back of lurid, moralising editorials, or to all those who approved of or revelled in his humiliation. We’ve put up a statue, given him a plaque in Westminster Abbey, adopted him as an icon, claimed him as a pioneer, studied him to death, republished him endlessly and made him one the very few above-the-title box office guarantee names of our entertainment industry. But I do not think we have understood him yet, or what was done to him. I don’t think we realise how much he is with us, rather than behind us.
Of all the details of this story, one image has stuck in my mind; Wilde and Mrs Robinson sitting alone in her room, silent, unobserved in the middle of a London night noisy with speculation, rumour and libel, the smug applause of theatres, the vicious gossip of hotel dining rooms. What I wanted to do was the impossible thing that only theatre can do; to put us in that room.
*
With regards to staging; I am writing this introduction before the opening night of the first production, so I’ve no idea what the piece will finally look like. As I indicate in the script, my intention was that it be put on stage without any token “period” clutter, and most especially without any realistic depiction of Mrs. Robinson’s room. I had in mind a rather sombre, beautiful space, with the audience close around it, with just two mahogany chairs; a space where the actors would feel free to talk directly to the audience and also to move whenever and however they needed to. I would emphasise beautiful, despite the suggestion of a resonant emptiness; this is Oscar Wilde, after all.
This piece is respectfully dedicated to the two great actors for whom I had the privilege of writing it, Sheila Hancock and Corin Redgrave.
Neil Bartlett
September 2000
Characters
Oscar Wilde
Mrs Robinson, a palm-reader
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