The Pictures of Simon Gray: Dramatizing Degeneration
2000; University of Toronto Press; Volume: 43; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.3138/md.43.1.56
ISSN1712-5286
Autores Tópico(s)Irish and British Studies
ResumoIn the process of surviving the fin de vingtieme siecle, British theatre re-enacts both literally and metaphorically the end of the nineteenth century, finding in the witty disillusionment of Oscar Wilde a way of seeing present reflections of failed humanism and modernism. The erosion of spiritual values finds expression in portraits of debauched idealism and self-loathing. Dorian Gray's picture comes down from the attic and inhabits the drawing room. That Wilde's life is more the object of scrutiny than the plays he wrote is also a reflection of a contemporary compulsion to investigate the relationship of life and art — an inquiry into biography as self-portrait. David Hare's The Judas Kiss opened at the Playhouse Theatre in London in 1998, produced by the Almeida Company, and transferred to New York, with Liam Neeson as Wilde; Moises Kaufman's Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde opened in 1997 in New York (and concurrently in San Francisco), directed by Kaufman at the Greenwich House Theatre, and was produced during the summer of 1998 in Toronto at the Canadian Stage Company's Berkeley Street Theatre, again directed by Kaufman; and Wilde, the movie, stalling Stephen Fry, was released in 1997.
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