WRETCHED LITTLE BRAT to Open Next Month at Sean O'Casey Theatre

"Wretched Little Brat", a new play about the lovers of Oscar Wilde, premieres in Dublin at the Sean O'Casey Theatre on November 16th and runs until November 21st. Written by Brian Merriman, starring Sean Doyle (Callum, Fair City) as Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas and David Flynn as Robbie Ross, the play charts the lives of Wilde's closest associates up to 1945, in a frank telling of the aftermath of one of Victorian England's most scandalous courtroom downfalls. Brian Graham Higgins plays Wilde with a team of four actors (Ailish Leavy, Anne Doyle, Stephan Gorman and Eli Caldwell) playing 'The Mothers', 'The Wives', 'The Older and The Younger Men' - all caught up in this spiral of litigation, acrimony, morality and loyalty.

Presented in a special winter programme by the International Dublin Gay Theatre Festival, this new play, from the writer of "Eirebrushed", an LGBT story of the 1916 Easter Rising, challenges the view of the Wilde legend as being more than the story of the vengeful Douglas - dubbed a "wretched little brat" by George Bernard Shaw.

"In post-referendum Ireland, it is now possible to examine this flawed historical source that shocked a moralistic society and hindered LGBT progress for a century and still does, in law, religion, work and family life," said playwright Brian Merriman. "This new full length play challenges our lingering inherited perceptions - that Bosie's manic control and endless destructive appetites still dominate an entire LGBT culture today."

The documentary drama, based on historical testimony, finally informs an honest exploration today in modern Ireland by exposing the source of our stereotypes and prejudices. "Are Bosie and Wilde's class ridden excesses still an accurate reference point for society as the 'atypical gay life' or is it just the unique life story of a 'Wretched Little Brat'?" Merriman concluded.