Oscar Wilde's Grandson Questions 'New' Play

According to the Guardian, Oscar Wilde's grandson Merlin Holland is not happy with north London's King's Head Theatre for claiming that  they are producing "the world premiere of the only unproduced Oscar Wilde play".

Holland told the Guardian: "It is dishonest to foist this on the public. The play should really have been billed as 'A play based on an idea [scenario] by Oscar Wilde, written in French by Guillot de Saix, translated into English and further adapted by Charles Osborne'."

He continued, "I finished reading it today. It is a pretty appalling piece of work ... peppered with a few aphorisms from other plays, marginally altered in order to sound a bit like Oscar Wilde ...It just staggers along in a rather limp fashion. If it was sent to a producer of plays today, he'd send it straight back with a rejection slip. It's the worst sort of bad melodrama."

Director Adam Spreadbury-Maher responded: "I'm completely comfortable calling it a play by Oscar Wilde ... we do credit De Saix, Henri de Briel and Osborne as translators and adaptors ... it's the same way that [Damien] Hirst doesn't paint all his paintings."

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