Review: THE JUDAS KISS Seduces at BAM

Fade in. org*sm. Poem. Fade out.

There is comedy. There is tragedy. And then there is the story of how Oscar Wilde was duped for his lust over an English Lord.

Inside a house in the Piccadilly, a man named Gilbert sits at a piano. He shares company with Ernest, a fellow conversationalist who has just opened a book. They begin to dialogue at length on the nature of objectivity in relation to art, namely in the role of the critic.

The Critic As Artist is one of the many classics that Oscar Wilde wrote during the highly salacious affair now depicted as his life. Over a century later, his downfall is attributed to an ongoing social cause to protect human dignity throughout the globe: sexual diversity.

"Every great man nowadays has his disciples, and it is always Judas who writes the biography," Wilde wrote, soon after the opening in The Critic As Artist, subtitled, With Some Remarks Upon The Importance of Doing Nothing.

The importance of doing nothing is a fitting theme for the first act of The Judas Kiss, a play performed at BAM May 11-June 12, written by David Hare, directed by Neil Armfield and starring Rupert Everett as Oscar Wilde.

Before lights reveal the posh Cadogan Hotel in London, before Lord Alfred Douglas frets over the fate of his famous literary lover, and before Wilde himself appears to embrace betrayal, the show opens with nude room servants embracing in cunnilingus.

Behind closed doors, Wilde is his raucously satirical self, seated indifferently in his room while a charge of imprisonment for gross indecency weighs more heavily than the cream on his lobster dinner. Finally, his decision is becoming of a rebel poet, to do nothing more than shut his eyes and dream away inevitable exile.

Endearingly nicknamed Bosie, the Lord is a symbol of state mockery, physical exploitation and political connivance, streaked with the profound naivety of puerile ambition and inflated pride. Hare writes with a wicked pen, lucid, elegant and imbued with the passion and grace of Wilde as, above all, a peerless voice in literature.

Only the true artist knows the beautiful necessity of failure, having gained mental clarity enough to discern human failings from natural propensity. Through literature, Wilde represented the social urge to humanization as a transformation of the personal intellect in communion with truths only perceived in the depths of solitude and nature, beyond society.

As an expatriate in Naples for the second act of The Judas Kiss, Wilde endures historic tragedy and private duplicity through the spiritual force of the creative life. Everett has the presence, the voice, and the manner to create a convincing Wilde deserving of public compassion.

Armfield has directed a strong and vital play that will rival any 21st century entertainment complex while preserving the classic theatrical form of the tragedy. From the org*sm of two lowly workers to the lonesome poetry of an epochal artist, The Judas Kiss perfects the art of denouement.

Photo Credit: Cylla von Tiedemann

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