Theatre in Review: The Judas Kiss (Brooklyn Academy of Music/Harvey Theater)

	Charlie Rowe, Rupert Everett. Photo. Richard Termine.

Oscar Wilde died for your sins: This is the apparent theme of David Hare's play about the great disgraced Irish playwright. The Judas Kiss focuses on two key moments in Wilde's downfall: The first act, set in a rather louche London hotel where the staff is available to the guests when they aren't busy with each other, takes place on the day, in 1895, that Wilde must choose whether to flee England or stay and face a charge of gross indecency, with the certain prospect of imprisonment. Wilde, of course, has put himself in this predicament, first by suing the father of his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, for libel, having been called a "somdomite" by the older man, and later by offering flippant remarks about homosexuality on the witness stand. (As Douglas notes, bitterly, it wasn't even a good joke.) As the play begins, certain incriminating papers are making their way toward Herbert Asquith, the prime minister, who will authorize a prosecution, in spite of -- or perhaps because of -- Wilde's celebrity status. With reporters beginning to gather in the street and the possibility of the police arriving at any minute, Wilde makes a "seminal decision" -- he orders lunch.

The first act provides a reasonable amount of tension as Robert Ross, speaking for the majority of Wilde's friends, urges him to take refuge on the Continent while Lord Alfred Douglas, the childish, narcissistic love of Wilde's life -- who rather enjoys the drama of it all -- wants the playwright to stay and fight to save his reputation -- a doomed effort, as anyone with the slightest grasp of late Victorian morality would instantly grasp. We feel Wilde's shock and pain as one door after another is closed to him -- as his wife, Constance, denies him access to their sons and as the news comes back from Asquith's office that the efforts of an intermediary have come to nought and an arrest is imminent. Hare also uses the hotel's atmosphere of casual lust and sex for hire to establish the hypocrisy of the social order that is determined to bring Wilde down.

At first, Wilde's inaction in the face of so much drama adds to the suspense, but, as the scene wears on, his attitude becomes exasperating. This problem is exacerbated in the second act, set a couple of years later in Naples, where, having been released from prison, Wilde has fled with Douglas. (In doing so, he has royally ticked off Constance, his only source of income.) By now, Wilde is a ruin, overweight, unwell, his looks completely gone; he spends virtually the entire act seated at stage center while Douglas cavorts in the nude with a well-toned local fisherman. The second act replicates the structure of the first, with Ross again showing up and pleading with Wilde to act in his own best interest, and Douglas once again interfering. This time, however, Douglas has another decision to make, which will have devastating consequences for the man he allegedly loves.

Neil Armfield's production is a vast improvement over the 1998 Broadway engagement, if only because Rupert Everett is so much better than Liam Neeson as Wilde. (There is one major reservation about Everett's work, which we'll get to in a moment.) Fitted into a fat suit, he quite resembles the playwright, and, in Act II, his decline is spectacular: He has become an overweight, seedy old man at the age of 41. Given the solemn, almost funereal, mood of The Judas Kiss, Hare has made few attempts at Wildean wit, but Everett makes the most of the wry remarks assigned to his character. Caught by a hotel employee in an embrace with Douglas, he says, "Forgive us, Mr. Moffatt, Lord Alfred and I have been parted for almost an hour." Offering the best defense for his inaction, he roars, "Because it is simple! Open that door and the real world comes into this room." Later, reduced to penury in Naples, fending off Douglas, who still wants him to mount a public defense, he demurs, saying, "Ours is an ethic of silence. Preferably on a substantial private income. Which, I admit, at this moment, is proving the elusive part of the plan." So effective is Everett, one wishes that, in his effort to suggest the playwright's silken way with an epigram, he didn't slur so many words, often swallowing his best lines whole as he reaches into his lower register to ram home a bon mot.

There are also fine contributions from Cal MacAninch as Robert, his deep love for Wilde simmering with grievance at having been replaced by Douglas, and Charlie Rowe as Douglas, who is capable of demanding, in one breath, that Wilde defend "Greek love" in public, while making plans to leave him. But two full acts of dramatic stasis prove to be too much; Wilde's passivity in the face of such adversity might provide rich material for drama, but Hare seems only interested in sanctifying it, defending his nonaction as evidence of his transcendent love for the entirely unworthy, totally self-interested Douglas. "The vulgar error is that love is a kind of illusion," Wilde says. "It is the fault of bad poets who encourage this mistake. 'I am completely enraptured,' lovers say, as if somehow they were being deceived. When the affair ends, they say, 'I have been stripped of my illusions'......The everyday world is shrouded. We see it dimly. Only when we love do we see the true person. The truth of a person is only visible through love. Love is not the illusion. Life is."

Indeed, by the end of the play, Wilde has been transformed into a kind of secular saint, defined by the Christian virtues of unselfishness, forgiveness, and forbearance. That title is no accident: Hare makes Wilde into a Christ figure, left, as the lights go down, in his own personal Golgotha, having been betrayed by his closest followers. (Hare even has Wilde compare the relative betrayals of Christ by Judas and John.) Indeed, Wilde's fall makes a pitiable story, but it is an even greater pity that one of the 19th century's most impudent wits and wickedly accurate social observers should end up encased in such piety.

Dale Ferguson's set features a basic look defined by obsidian black walls. In the first act, they are covered with heavy purple velvet drapes; these are replaced in the second act by a canopy-like arrangement of diaphanous while muslin. It's efficient enough, but the overall effect is a little gloomy; one misses the contrast been bleak London and sunny Italy afforded by Bob Crowley's Broadway design. Rick Fisher's elegantly angled lighting does provide a warming blast of Neopolitan sunshine, which cools down to a deathly white as night falls. Sue Blane's costumes are beautiful examples of men's period tailoring, and she makes a powerful statement when Wilde appears in Act II wearing his Act I outfit, now looking horribly distressed. Paul Groothuis' sound design provides some finely chosen musical interludes between scenes and ambient Naples sound effects, including seagulls and the tolling of bells.

It's a strange experience to have one of English literature's great wits treated with so much reverence and so little wit. One wonders what Wilde would make of it; in my mind's eye I see him snickering discreetly. -- David Barbour