What would Oscar Wilde be doing if he were alive today? The flamboyant, self-proclaimed hedonist might well be wearing studded leather and dancing the night away, as we see him in this immersive production. Except here Wilde (Mark Mauriello) is hiding in a bunker with a gang of exiles in a future fascist state.
His wife, Constance Lloyd (Elizabeth Chalmers) is there, too, along with Wilde’s aristocratic lover, Lord Alfred “Bosie” Douglas (Jamie Cruttenden): they sing, dance with glo-sticks on a circular stage and intermittently tell his story from a series of mobile podiums (set design by Andrew Exeter).
Created by Brooklyn-based performer Mauriello and directed by Shira Milikowsky, this is a nightclub dance show-cum-cabaret with a flimsy drama tacked on. The story ranges from the here and now of the bunker, though it glazes over any detail, to songs about reality television, the birth of Twitter and, most peculiarly, the American teen series The OC, with the number Julie, How Did You Know? based on a character from that show.
The narrative of Wilde’s life is too much a potted biography – we are taken from his rising fame and American tour to his marriage, his affair with Bosie and imprisonment in a few fast snatches, with pumping dance beats in between. It reaches towards some intensity when Wilde is challenged by Constance – where did his pleasure-seeking, love affair and debts leave her and their children? – but it is a dramatic tidbit.
This is a shame because Mauriello makes a dazzling Wilde, a cross between Dracula, The Rocky Horror Show’s Frank-n-Furter and a metalhead. He and Cruttenden have chemistry, though their affair is not dramatised beyond a summary and a few kisses.
The explosion of song and dance – Euro disco and pop band choreography by Andrew Barret Cox – is the fun part. The audience gathers around the podiums, moving with them, and the cast of high energy, voguing outcasts are energetic dancers.
It’s the opposite in tone to Rupert Everett’s lugubrious, brilliant biopic on Wilde’s final, abject, years and while it may set audiences up for a night of potential Wildean carousing it does not give us much more than a nightclub floor-show.
• At Assembly George Square Gardens, Edinburgh, until 27 August.
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