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A CurtainUp
Review
The Judas Kiss
Some call it Wildeania, some Oscarinia. By any other name the appetite for
books, movies and
plays (see Links at end) about the Irish-English celebrity writer Oscar Wilde seems as large as
Wilde's own larger-than-life persona and enormous appetite for the best things in life which for
him included sex with men. In Victorian England this last was subject to legal prosecution under
the law of "gross indecency" and led to Wilde's three celebrity trials and incarceration.
The approach to Wilde taken in The Judas Kiss, the last in David Hare's trilogy of plays
about
love and betrayal, (see link at end of this review) is best described as the Oscar
Talk Show. Mr. Hare hints at but does not focus on Wilde's life as the outrageous and
epigrammatic toast of London (as well as the U.S. lecture circuit). He uses the Court-TV
worthy drama of the three trials that began with his own suit against his decidedly unworthy
lover's homophobic father to jump start his examination of Wilde as a figure
of almost biblical nobility -- to wit, the title's allusion to Judas Iscariot, one of the original
twelve disciples of Jesus, who for thirty pieces of silver betrayed Him, with a kiss of identification
to the priests and elders of Jerusalem.
What we have then is a play which uses what Hare calls "stage poetry" to reimagine what might
have happened between Wilde and his current lover, Lord Alfred Doulas, (a.k.a. Bosie), and past
lover, Robert Ross, (a.k.a. Robbie), during two
crucial episodes of his life -- the first when he is faced with the choice of exile or arrest and the
second two years after that fateful decision when he has risked betrayal once again by returning to
the lover who already betrayed him once. In short we have Wilde at moments of emotional
crisis without the more colorful scenes in his life that led to his fall from glitterati splendor to
ruin.
We also have Liam Neeson the movie star and stage actor to bring his particular brand of
charismatic excitement to the more spiritually than flamboyantly grand role Hare has assigned
him. He does not disappoint.
Neeson's Wilde is indeed a towering spirit and physical presence and without any of the usual
bombast and showiness. Unlike Stephen Fry who manages to strongly resemble him in the movie
Wilde , Neeson's physical resemblance to Wilde is limited to his
height. Oh, he still radiates style as he bursts into the Cadogan Hotel room of his lover in a
fur-lined coat with his hair brushing his shoulders. Even with the playwright's firmness in holding
back the usual shower of epigrams, the sardonic humor is still there.
Leeson is somewhat hobbled by a first act which is more or less a debate between
Wilde, Lord Bosie (Tom Hollander) and Robbie (Peter Capaldi) as to whether should stay
and eat his lobster lunch or flee to safety. As even those unfamiliar with Wilde's history
quickly surmise, his story is indeed "already written" (as he sees it partially because the
English are bound to punish an uppity Irishman but in fact by his own fatalism).
It is
in the
more interesting second act set in Naples that Neeson takes his real opportunity to hold us
memerized. Here he's physically devastated by the
imprisonment famously detailed in "The Ballad of Reading Gaol." His face is etched in sadness
and cast in an unhealthy yellowish pallor. The long hair hangs like dank sea weed and a heavy
black suit underscores his displacement in the sunny world of Naples. As Neeson's Wilde puts it,
looking like "a
pederastic Anglican bishop who has been all night in a distillery." What's more he spends
that entire act sitting in a chair . He is
Jesus sitting on the cross, nailed there not by Judas but by
John (the self-absorbed Bosie). Hare, like Wilde, is a talented wordsmithith and manages to
inject wry humor into the biblical allusion to the title when he has Wilde state drily that
"Christ died at six . . . the cocktail hour." Most importantly, the deposed giant always keeps his
heart and
soul and dignity
intact.
As that first act is pretty much a set-up for the far more moving and dynamic second, so the
passionate heterosexual love scene on which the curtain rises turns out to be a set-up -- in this
case with no other purpose than to grab our attention. You could, I suppose, view that steamy
curtain opener, in metaphorical terms. As the young servants' (Stina Nielsen and Alex
Walkinshaw) coupling is interrupted by the
demands of the hotel butler (Richard Clark), so the five years of passionate happiness knew in
that room have
been rudely interrupted by the Victorian facts of life and his own stubborn missteps in his
battles with his lover's father.
The opening scene might also be said to unify the time span
between the
London and Naples scene which also begins with a coupling. However, such interpretations are
a stretch. The passionate servants are extraneous. The later sex scene is more meaningful to
the tragedy of Oscar's unstoppable passion for his fickle young Lord. In it we see Bosie
making love to a young man (Daniel Serafini-Sauli) he picked up as Wilde, a desolate hulk in
black watches and
gamely musters his wit to describe the pair as "practicing astronomy" (the pick-up's name being
Galileo).
Despite a respectably sized seven-member cast and
a two-set design by Bob Crowley that magnificently captures the towering splendor of life
before the trials and the loneliness and loss of the post-prison period, The Judas Kiss
is
basically a one-man show. Peter Capaldi as Wilde's first lover and devoted friend and adviser
remains a rather nondescript and shadowy figure throughout. As for Tom Hollander's Lord
Alfred Douglas (Bosie), what may seem like a clever bit of casting -- the diminutive Bosie
dwarved physically as well as spiritually by Neeson's monument sized Oscar -- misfires.
Hollander's Bosie is never anything less than a petulant, me-me-me brat who defends his first
betrayal with "I was the last to go."
In a pre-opening interview Hare talked about Bosie as
" a man with interests and feelings and loves and
fascinations of his own, and I hope I do him the dignity of taking
him seriously." While he has indeed captured the generous spirit of Wilde, Bosie never
comes through as anything more than a pusilanimous, petty character who, as pointed out in our
review
of Gross Indecency lived long enough to become a Nazi sympathizer. His only
memorable accomplishment, not mentioned in the play is the coining of the phrase "the love
that has no name." For all of Oscar's
protestation that no one has the right to ask "what do you see in him" you can't help questioning
not only his choice but this major blind spot in his celebrated good taste.
So how does The Judas Kiss add up in the final analysis?
Talky first act. Moving
second act.
A tour de force for the main actor and worth seeing if only for that performance, but
also for David Hare's always strong dialogue and ideas. An overheard
intermission question from one audience member to another also bears repeating: "Would we
be enjoying this more if we hadn't seen the other show downtown first?" So see Neeson who's
here for a limited run first and save Gross Indecency which seems to have turned into a
downtown landmark for a later more punched-up drama experience.
Since the people responsible for the show's Playbill seemed to assume no program notes
were
necessary, a list of links follows the production credits for your added pleasure and
edification.
THE JUDAS KISS
By David Hare
Directed by Richard Eyre
Starring Liam Neeson as Oscar Wilde
WithTom Hollander ("Bosie" Douglas), Peter Capaldi (Robbie Ross), Richard Clarke (Sandy
Moffatt), Stina
Nielsen (Phoebe Nielsen), Alex Alkinshaw (Arthur Wellsley) and Daniel Serafini-Sauli ( Galileo
Masconi)
Sets and costumes: Bob Crowley
Lighting: Mark Henderson
Music: George Fenton
Sound:John A. Leonard
Broadhurst Theatre, 235
W. 44th St. (212/239-6200)
4/23/98-8/01/98; opens 4/28
Reviewed 4/30/98 by Elyse
Sommer
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