Pride and Prejudice

Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde – Promethean Theatre Ensemble

One of the oldest maxims of the theater is that you can create drama by letting the audience know something the characters don’t, at least not yet. It’s what gives historical dramas their bite. We know what’s going to happen, but we aren’t bored as long we’re invested in the characters unknowingly marching to their doom. That truism is on full display in Promethean Theatre Ensemble’s restaging of it’s 2016 production of Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde.

Most people know a flattened version of the story, simply that Oscar Wilde was sent to jail for having homosexual relationships. The full story, as it usually is, was more complicated and more interesting. The story begins with the Marquess of Queensberry, the father of Oscar’s lover Alfred, leaving his card at Wilde’s club with a libelous accusation on it, that Wilde was a ‘posing sodomite.’ This was all in an attempt to force his son to abandon his relationship with Wilde. Rather than let the matter drop on the advice of his other friends, Alfred convinced Oscar to pursue a criminal libel action against his own father, as much because Alfred hated his father for his own reasons, as much as any injury to Wilde’s reputation. But in forcing Queensberry to defend his accusation, he was ready to produce five men who would testify that they all had relations with Wilde that the law deemed ‘grossly indecent.’ Faced with this evidence, Wilde dropped his suit, but in doing so, gave credence to the accusation and quickly found himself on trial for them. The first criminal trial resulted in a hung jury, but the crown would not drop the suit for largely political reasons, since the government did want to appear to condone Wilde’s action, nor draw attention to its own members who may have been engaging in the same ‘gross indecency.’ Wilde was eventually convicted and served two years, the conditions of which contributed to declining health his death three years after his release in 1900.

The sad irony, so perfect you could think it fictional, is that in bringing the first suit, Wilde sealed his own fate. The government had no interest in exposing the scandalous network of liaisons that could topple Britain’s aristocratic classes. Even when Wilde’s first trial as plaintiff failed, it dragged its feet on bringing charges against Wilde for as long as it could, to give him time to flee to France, but Wilde wouldn’t go. He was one of the most popular authors of his day, and the media attention to the first trial generated meant the government could no longer look the other way. Wilde was used to being the most clever person in the room, and his faith in that cleverness cost him everything.

Premiering with a cast of nine men back in 1997, Promethean produced this show in 2016 and again now with a cast of five women and four men. I remain uncertain what if any specific dramatic point they may be trying to make with the casting, but it may be most effective if they weren’t trying to make any point at all. If the production simply wants to expand the range of roles that women have access to, it’s a worthy goal, and while I may not have been able to discern some grand point from the casting choices, neither did I feel distanced from the story because of them. As much as Wilde’s trial was an indictment of his art as his actions, the show serves as a defense of art and the artist to explore the world as they see fit. Up and down the line, the entire cast was fantastic, and they brought what could easily have been sermonizing material to sparkling life.

Jaime Bragg as Oscar Wilde is simply amazing. She portrays the arc of Wilde’s fall with confidence and skill. In the first trial, she is poised, at the height of Wilde’s popularity and wit, parrying every question with a smirk. Bragg achieves the balancing act of being the smarmy know-it-all that you actually root for. As the tables turn, you feel Wilde’s shock then numbness then resignation. The final scene of the play rings with Wilde’s wit, but none of his humor, all made more aching by Bragg’s performance. I think the saddest part of Wilde’s legacy is that it gets reduced to “he went to prison for being gay.” People are more than their tragedies. The biggest risk for a show that focuses on the last five years of his life is exaggerating that reduction. This show does not do that on the strength of Bragg’s performance.

There’s a risk in over-relying on primary sources like transcripts and newspaper clippings. Rarely are people as eloquent off the cuff as they are if they can edit themselves. And even then, the pieces rarely fit together neatly. Life is a little too messy for narrative structure without some help from the author. But Oscar Wilde is not an ordinary person nor is his an ordinary case. In the hands of an extraordinary cast, Wilde’s life and wit and society’s cruelty and hypocrisy are brought to vivid life. More directly, I left wanting to go find my copy of A Picture of Dorian Gray.

Highly Recommended

Reviewed by Kevin Curran

Presented February 23 – March 23 by Promethean Theatre Ensemble at Strawdog Theatre, 1802 W. Berenice Ave., Chicago.

Tickets are available by visiting www.promeatheantheatre.org.

Additional information about this and other area productions can be found at www.theatreinchicago.com.