Wildean War: Politics of Fins-de-siecle Spectatorship

Abstract

The centenary of Oscar Wilde 's t897 release from prison saw an explosion of drama and film that marched the playwright from professional and romantic glory to inexorable ruin. During the late spring and summer of 1998, New York theatre-goers had their pick of Wildean diaspora. At the West Village's Minetta Lane Theatre, Moises Kaufman had already spent more than a year putting Wilde through his juridical paces in Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde (1997). Uptown at Broadway's Broadhurst Theatre, film buffs could ogle a thoroughly butch Wilde in the person of Liam Neeson, mouthing the suicidal inventions of David Hare's The Judas Kiss (1998). Wildeophiles on a budget could catch Stephen Fry's star-making tum in Brian Gilbert's film Wilde (1998).' And any Yank who had missed the London premiere of Tom Stoppard's The Invention of Love (1997), in which a shattered Wilde carpe diems A.E. Housman on the River Styx, had only to await the play's transfer to Lincoln Center and Broadway's Lyceum Theatre (2001 ).