[lit-ideas] Green Carnation
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 25 Oct 2004 12:59:33 EDT
"In order to distinguish us from ordinary blokes,
we all wear a green carnation",
Sir Noel Coward
Incidentally, Read is also a Rupert Brooke fan, founder of the first-ever
Rupert Brooke Society.
---
Cheers,
JL
----
MUSICAL ABOUT WILDE CLOSES AFTER ONE SHOW By Jill Lawless
LONDON - Like the career of its subject, London's latest musical began
in a blaze of publicity, set tongues wagging and ended, prematurely , in
disgrace.
Oscar Wilde: The Musical opened last Tuesday at the 500-seat Shaw
Theatre. It closed the next day after receivig excoriating reviews and
selling just five tickets for its second performance.
Written, produced and directed by Mike Read, a radio DJ whose fame
peaked in the 1980s, Oscar Wilde set out , according to its publicity
material, to chart Wilde's " tragic descent from idolization to isolation" -
with a script written entirely in rhyming couplets.
The Daily Telegraph declared the show " a pitiful vanity project" . The
Evening Standard judged it " a musical of exquisite awfulness."
The author of plays, poems, essays and novels, Wilde was the epigram
-spouting darling of 1890s London. But his career ended in disgrace in
1895 , when he was sentenced to two years in prison for " gross indecency"
following a failed libel suit against the Marquis of Queensberry, father of
Wilde's lover, Lord Alfred Douglas.
Wilde died of cerebral meningitis in a Paris hotel room in November
1900 at the age of 46.
Read, who has written musicals based on Dicken's Great Expectations,
Shakespeare's A midsummer Night's dream and the life of crooner Cliff
Richard, mounted the show to mark the 150th anniversary of Wilde?s birth.
Last week he told The Independent newspaper . " I would like to think it
might still be performed in 100 years' time".
It seems unlikely . Newspapers reported that only five tickets had been
sold for Wednesday's performance when Read decided to pull the plug.
" I am naturally devastated at the turn of events. We had a fantastic West
End cast and the reaction of the audience at the press night was terrific",
Read said in a statement
The reaction of critics was harsh. The Daily Telegraph's Dominic Cavendish
judged it " a pitiful vanity project " that passes golden genius though the
filter of presumptuous mediocrity and produces over two hours of leaden
dross ."
In The Guardian, which gave the show zero stars out of five, Elizabeth
Mahoney lambastedRead's " forgetable songs that are lamely camp...or limply
sentimental." The Times' Benedict Nightingale said Wilde would be " chewing
his green carnation in dismay " if forced to watch the production.
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