BWW Review: GROSS INDECENCY: THE THREE TRIALS OF OSCAR WILDE

Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde

Written by Moisés Kaufman, Directed by Liz Fenstermaker; Stage Manager, Kevin Parker; Assistant Stage Manager, Amanda Ostrow; Costume Designer, Pamela DeGregorio; Lighting Designer, Erik Fox; Sound Designer, J Jumbelic; Dialect Coach, Susanna Harris Noon; Production Manager, Cat Dunham Meilus; Videographer, Casey Preston

CAST: Morgan Bernhard, James Bocock, Kyle Cherry, John Geoffrion, Gabriel Graetz, Joey Heyworth, Tom Lawrence, David Lutheran, Derek McCormack, Matthew Murphy, Luke Murtha, Brooks Reeves

Performances through August 26^th by Bad Habit Productions at Wimberly Theatre at the Boston Center for the Arts, 527 Tremont Street, Boston, MA; Box Office 617-933-8600 or www.BostonTheatreScene.com

Playwright Moisés Kaufman is best known for writing The Laramie Project, a play about the 1998 murder of gay college student Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyoming. In collaboration with other members of the Tectonic Theater Project, of which Kaufman is founder and director, they conducted hundreds of interviews and drew on news reports as well as their own experiences in the local community to create a documentary-style drama that relates the story with a combination of good investigative journalism and deeply-felt emotions. Kaufman first employed this original format for storytelling in his 1997 play Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde which also depends heavily on the facts of an historical event to generate a compelling piece of theater.

Director Liz Fenstermaker supplies the estrogen and the vision for the in-the-round staging of the all-male Bad Habit Productions' Gross Indecency on the boards at the Wimberly Theatre. Her seating arrangement allows for an intimate view of the action and results in the audience performing as the de facto jury in Wilde's trials. With the exception of the actor in the title role, the members of the ensemble play multiple characters and are charged with reciting bits of narration, including providing the authors and names of books used as source material for the script. They are also kept busy moving furniture and making small costume changes to differentiate the scenes and their roles, and you might find one or more of the young men seated next to you periodically, as I did, further immersing you in the intensity of the moment.

At the height of Wilde's success in 1895, while his plays An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest were both being performed in London, he filed charges against the Marquess of Queensberry for committing an alleged criminal libel. The Marquess, whose handsome young son Lord AlFred Douglas was involved in an intimate friendship with the older writer, left his calling card at Wilde's club inscribed: "For Oscar Wilde, posing somdomite" [sic]. In order to defend himself and avoid incarceration, the Marquess hired detectives to find evidence of Wilde's proclivities, turning the trial into a salacious examination of Wilde's life and the morality of his works, and ultimately forcing him to withdraw his prosecution.

Although his friends advised him to leave the country following Queensberry's acquittal, Wilde elected to remain (beyond principle, it is unclear why he chose this self-destructive route) and he was arrested and prosecuted for gross indecency for homosexual acts. Although the trial ended in a hung jury, the government continued to pursue the case in a third trial that finally resulted in Wilde's conviction and subsequent imprisonment for two years at hard labor. Using the trial transcripts, personal correspondence, interviews, and additional source material, Kaufman maps out Wilde's life story from fashionable celebrity to object of public scorn, but takes care to shine a light on his artistic genius and the importance of his philosophy in the context of the Victorian era.

From producing and starring in family holiday pageants as a child, to avid member of Broadway Across America and Show of the Month Club, Nancy has cultivated her love of the art and respect for the craft of theatre. She fulfilled a dream when she became an adult-onset tap dancer in the early 90's ("Gotta dance!"); she fulfills another by providing reviews for BroadwayWorld.com and evolving as a freelance writer. Nancy is an alumna of Syracuse University and a retired Probation Officer-in-Charge in the Massachusetts Trial Court system.

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