Wild About Wilde

Oscar Wilde New York 1882

s he brings his acclaimed one-man show A Wilde Fan to The Whale on Thursday, September 30th, we asked Myles Breen to reveal just why he’s mad about Oscar…

© Caleb Purcell Photography

You can find out more about this Bottom Dog Theatre Company production – and grab yer tickets – right here.

Let’s play a game! You are hosting a special dinner. You are allowed to invite just one special guest.

The rules are that the person must be dead, not personally connected to you, but they can be from any period in history. Who do you invite? Cleopatra, Napoleon, Eamonn de Valera? Obviously you want to invite someone who you admire, someone who has had a remarkable life, has achieved great things but also whom you feel might be good craic!

I am an actor and playwright so William Shakespeare immediately springs to mind. The problem there is I’m not sure I can carry on a conversation in iambic pentameter, and to be honest a lot of Shakespeare’s jokes go over my head.

I am also a gay Irish man, so the guest I would invite is Oscar Wilde. As a child I was read his fairy tales (The Happy Prince, The Selfish Giant). These were not your Disney happy ever after stories – they were strange worlds where many of them end in tragedy, but still magical and fascinating. Later I studied The Importance of Being Earnest for the Leaving Cert, which I still think is one of the most perfect plays ever written. From then, I was hooked. I read everything I could find. It amazed me that the witty elegant Wilde who wrote Lady Windermere’s Fan also wrote the intensely poetic Salome.

Then of course I became fascinated with his life. The way he took over London society, and was at first famous for being famous! Then his success as a writer of plays, novels and stories. And now we come to his downfall.

You can call him Al

As a gay man Oscar Wilde seems to me to be our first gay celebrity scandal. His relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas (Bosie) sets up a chain of events that leads to his conviction, imprisonment and to all of society shunning him. Once the toast of London he dies in exile in Paris. Famously he declares on his deathbed, “This wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. Either it goes or I do.” Witty to the last.

© Caleb Purcell Photography

So Oscar Wilde would be my guest, he ticks all the boxes. Also I am sure there wouldn’t be any awkward silences, as he has said of himself. “I can forego the pleasure of talking but I cannot bear for you to forego the pleasure of listening.” The question is which Wilde will turn up? The wit, the poet, the lover, the criminal or the exile?

In A Wilde Fan, using Oscar Wilde’s own words I attempt to understand the nature of this complicated man who still today seems ‘modern’. Using excerpts from well-known works like The Picture of Dorian Gray, as well as lesser-known poems and his own personal letters, I hope the audience will leave the theatre as wild about Wilde as I am.

You can find out more about this Bottom Dog Theatre Company production – and grab yer tickets – right here.