Chevron Theatre, a company of young, one assumes university students, presented their one hour hommage to Oscar Wilde this evening.
The vocals (harmonies) were lush and powerful, loud and clear with excellent diction, and the choreography upbeat and sensuous; but that seems to be, for me at least, where the praise must end.
We are presented with a Victorian-esque bar of deviants dressed in black and red. We are ostensibly in Paris, and Oscar Wilde enters to tell his life story.. his loves, his losses, and his time in Reading Gaol. However, none of this seems to be in any way authentic (except the names of the people) and it is as if we are in one of Dante's circles of Hell. In fact, if I may be so bold as to re-quote a pertinent line from the production, the company completely "failed to authentically recreate" the mood, the milieu, and the characters that peopled it. Wilde was nothing like the man himself, and neither were any of his friends and lovers. This was much more a 'Moulin Rouge' style fantasy than anything.
The company were sincere and talented, giving a high-energy and powerful production, but perhaps they were, as Oscar was himself, just too narcissitic to truly see the wood for the trees.
Reviewer - Matthew Dougall
on - 24.8.22
on - 24.8.22
A flimsy criticism involving typos
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