Wilde without the boy + The ballad of reading Gaol

Spettacolo in lingua originale con sovratitoli in italiano

Sinossi

Gareth Armstrong is no newcomer to the Gerolamo; he directed Hugh Whitmore’s My Darling Clemmie in 2019 for the first ETM showcase. This time he is presenting two classic works by Oscar Wilde. After a sell-out runs at the 2015 and 2016 Edinburgh Festivals and, subsequently, throughout the UK, Gerard Logan (Olivier Nominee – RSC) comes to the Gerolamo with Wilde Without the Boy, Armstrong’s award-winning dramatisation of “De Profundis”, the searingly-passionate love letter Oscar Wilde wrote to his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, from his cell in Reading jail. Two years previously, Wilde had been sentenced to two years hard labour for ‘…acts of gross indecency with other males…’

In the second half of the evening, Logan will perform “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”, Wilde’s heart-rending poem reflecting on his two years’ hard labour, and a fellow inmate’s hanging. The poem is an unflinching indictment of the Victorian penal system, particularly the death penalty, and its regular rhythms also recall the repetitive harshness of prison life as experienced by Wilde and all other inmates. This performance is underscored by a beautiful, original and specially-commissioned score by the award-winning RSC composer, Simon Slater.

“…The gods had given me almost everything….Whatever I touched I made beautiful… I summed up all systems in a phrase, and all existence in an epigram…”

Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

Tra il 2015 e il 2016 il regista Gareth Armostrong e il premiato attore Gerard Logan, hanno portato in scena due opere di Oscar Wilde straordinariamente toccanti. La prima dal titolo Wilde without the boy si ispira al celebre De Profundis. La seconda invece è omonima al lungo componimento poetico: The ballad of Reading Gaol (La ballata del carcere di Reading) e si riferisce al periodo di detenzione trascorso da Wilde nel carcere di Reading dopo la condanna per “reati contro la pubblica decenza” che gli costò due anni di lavori forzati presso il carcere oltre che il trauma subito per aver assistito all’esecuzione del compagno di cella.

Altre informazioni

A cura di English Theatre Milan – www.Englishtheatremilan.org