The Judas Kiss

The Judas Kiss
By David Hare. Red Line Productions. The Old Fitz Theatre. February 15 – March 11, 2017

David Hare is such a master playwright in his sublime ability to blend ideas and philosophical debate into the flesh and blood of real characters.  The Judas Kiss is a deeply moving and thoughtful rendition of the night Oscar Wilde refuses to run from his imprisonment and, in the second act, some years later in Naples, how he negotiates his ruin.

Director Iain Sinclair shows a sharp eye for this emotional and intellectual storytelling, its big themes compacted onto the Old Fitz’s pocket stage.  Jonathan Hindmarsh’s over-dressed clutter of a Victorian hotel room becomes cloyingly claustrophobic as Wilde’s fearful fate gathers outside.  The contrasting stark staging of the all-white second act spotlights the isolated Wilde and his relationships now stripped bare, with Alexander Berlage’s lighting artfully supporting transitions in time.

Challenging all moral cant and hypocrisy, Josh Quong Tart is engaging, and almost muscular as Wilde, infatuated with the brattish Bosie, committed to his rebel destiny but not always emotionally enlightening as to why.  At the play’s Belvoir premiere in 1999, the late Bille Brown’s memorable Wilde was more sentimental, more foppish in handling Hare’s fine display of Wildean wit.

Young Hayden Maher gets the blind egocentricity and shouting petulance of Lord Alfred (Bosie) but the star of this trio is Simon London as Wilde’s first lover, now devoted if priggish friend, Robbie Ross.  London is true at every moment.

The three are ably supported by Robert Alexander, Hannah Raven and notably Luke Fewster playing the louche staff of Wilde’s favourite hotel, and the naked David Soncin later adds more risqué authenticity as Bosie’s Italian pick-up.   While the start is oddly uncertain, this is compelling theatre.

Martin Portus

Photographer: John Marmaras

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