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Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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A peacock meets his doom

May 20, 2016 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal I review the Brooklyn transfer of David Hare’s The Judas Kiss, starring Rupert Everett as Oscar Wilde. Here’s an excerpt.

* * *

David Hare would seem a near-ideal playwright to retell Oscar Wilde’s sad, sordid tale, for it is his special genius to steer clear of one-sided characterizations. Just as Mr. Hare almost always gives the (usually conservative) devil his due in his political plays, so does he leave the viewer of “The Judas Kiss,” his 1998 play about Wilde and Bosie Douglas, the playwright’s young lover, in no doubt of Wilde’s own culpability in his fall from grace. Yet the original production of “The Judas Kiss” flopped in London’s West End and on Broadway, and though it was thought at the time that Mr. Neeson, who created the role, was miscast, most critics also felt that the script itself came up short.

16-MKTING-0975_JudasKissHeader_SlideShow_2557So why is it now playing at Brooklyn’s BAM Harvey Theater? Because the successful 2012 London revival, of which this production is a belated transfer, starred Rupert Everett, who was universally regarded as ideal for the part. And so he is: Mr. Everett’s performance is a creative impersonation of breathtaking authority, one that flirts with exaggeration but never crosses the line into caricature….

Only one thing is missing from both play and portrayal. Mr. Hare has spoken of how Wilde “identified completely with Christ,” and Mr. Everett calls him “a kind of Christ figure.” This strikes me as coming it several miles too high, and it points to one of the failings of “The Judas Kiss,” which is that Mr. Hare, much to my surprise, has idealized Wilde’s personality….

More important, “The Judas Kiss” is dramaturgically unbalanced. The first act, in which Wilde is seen deliberately choosing not to run from the police who are en route to the louche hotel where he awaits his appointment with fate, is a textbook exercise in the accumulation of tension, and Neil Armfield, the director, turns the screw with delicious stealth, even daring to put a ticking clock on the wall. But the second act, which shows us Wilde in impoverished exile, unwinds all the anxiety and replaces it with a too-protracted arc of steadily accumulating gloom. Believable? Yes. Involving? Not entirely…

Even more disappointing are the one-note performances of the actors cast in the key supporting roles….

* * *

Read the whole thing here.

The trailer for the Toronto transfer of The Judas Kiss:

Replay: Skip James performs “Devil Got My Woman”

May 20, 2016 by Terry Teachout

TV CAMERASkip James performs “Devil Got My Woman” at the 1966 Newport Folk Festival:

(This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)

Almanac: W.H. Auden on the problem of modern drama

May 20, 2016 by Terry Teachout

INK BOTTLE“Unfortunately for the modern dramatist, during the past century and a half the public realm has been less and less of a realm where human deeds are done, and more and more of a realm of mere human behavior. The contemporary dramatist has lost his natural subject.”

W.H. Auden, “Genius & Apostle” (from The Dyer’s Hand)

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, ran earlier this season at New Orleans’ Le Petit Theatre. It previously closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

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