“well performed and well worth seeing.”
Do you really think it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations which it requires strength, strength and courage to yield to. Oscar Wilde
The Judas Kiss recounts the final years in the life of Oscar Wilde when the consequences of the playwright’s succumbing to “terrible temptations” leads him on a path to destruction.
The play describes two pivotal moments on that path: the first when, having been tried and vilified for gross indecency with men, and with scandal swirling around him because of his relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas, Wilde decides to stay in England and face imprisonment. The second moment is set two years later in Italy after Wilde’s release from Reading Gaol, when the lover for whom he has risked everything betrays him.
Providing exactly the kind of challenging and memorable writing upon which Next Stage thrives, patron David Hare’s masterful script explores in tense theatrical confrontations Wilde’s own conclusion that: The truth is rarely pure and never simple.
With grateful thanks to this show's Angels.
With grateful thanks to ©Michael Stevens/Pharos Photography for images 10 - 18.
Cast:
Rehearsal Photographs:
