Wilde Without the Boy & The Ballad of Reading Gaol

Type : Theatre

Performed by Olivier Nominee Gerard Logan Wilde Without the Boy is a dramatic interpretation of “De Profundis”, the letter Oscar Wilde wrote to his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, from his cell in Reading gaol.

Two years previously, Wilde had been imprisoned for acts of gross indecency. Brilliant, loving, witty and passionate, Wilde Without the Boy is a glimpse into the humbled, bruised, loving soul of one of the greatest geniuses ever to have lived.

Wilde Without the Boy will be followed by a reading of Oscar Wilde’s heart-rending poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol, reflecting on Wilde’s two years’ hard labour, a fellow inmate’s execution and the brutality of man’s punishment of man.

“…The gods had given me almost everything….genius….brilliancy, intellectual daring. Whatever I touched I made beautiful…..I summed up all systems in a phrase, and all existence in an epigram……Along with these things I had things that were different. I let myself be lured in to long spells of senseless and sensual ease……The danger was half the excitement….They were to me the brightest of gilded snakes!” Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

Directed and dramatised by the award-winning Gareth Armstrong.

★★★★ an incredibly moving performance
Broadway Baby

A raw, deeply felt portrayal of Wilde’s final years in prison as well as an insight into the heart of one of the most controversial figures of his age
New Welsh Review


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