Into the Wilde
Hart House Theatre presents Stephen and Mr. Wilde
By Marika Galadza
Issue date: 3/13/08 Section: Arts and Culture
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The play premiered at Hart House Theatre on February 28th and is in its third run on the Canadian stage since it was first written by playwright Jim Bartley in 1995. Stephen and Mr. Wilde follows Oscar Wilde's literary tour throughout southern Ontario in 1882 and eviscerates many themes, such as art and pragmatism, the role of master and servant, interracial love in a time of sexual taboo, and the nature of journalism.
The plot follows Wilde's relationship with his African-American butler, Stephen, and contrasts both characters' personal philosophies and values. When Stephen is suspected of affiliations with the African-American liberation movement, Wilde chooses to defend him against the scrutiny of the press, finding that truth, beauty, and even reputation are worth sacrificing in the name of friendship.
At times laugh-out-loud funny, his dandy-ness oozing out of every inch of velour sash and paisley accent, Schuster's Wilde is the kind of character you'd like to put in a jar and keep on the mantle, just to be able to laugh at later.
The conflicts unfold in witty and unlikely banter between Stephen and Wilde. Stephen, a lower-class former slave who has never experienced the life of privilege that Wilde takes for granted, offers moralistic and pragmatic counterarguments to Wilde's praise of beauty and the sanctity of art above all else. The contrast of characters wonderfully addresses the inaccessibility of art and aesthetic theory to economically and culturally marginalized groups, for whom survival and struggle define a different set of values. Yet even without these elaborate themes, the play is wittily written, remarkably performed, and a pleasure to watch, regardless of its didactic spin.
Jonathan Schuster plays Wilde with such delectable preciousness, I had to pinch myself to remember that it wasn't actually Wilde himself on stage. Schuster transforms lines into a lived, experiential kind of theatre, where one really gets lost in the characters and the play. At times laugh-out-loud funny, his dandy-ness oozing out of every inch of velour sash and paisley accent, Schuster's Wilde is the kind of character you'd like to put in a jar and keep on the mantle, just to be able to laugh at later.
In life, as well as in art, Wilde aligned himself with typically "feminine" interests. To support himself and his family, he edited the publication A Woman's World, and his Canadian literary tour included lectures entitled "The Decorative Arts" and "The House Beautiful". Bartley expertly captures Wilde's contestation of "male establishment" during an exceptionally patriarchal segment in history and shows how Wilde challenged stringent gender roles.
The play also wittily remarks on Canadian journalists' deluded interpretations of Wilde's philosophies. One scene catches a journalist misguidedly describing Wilde's lectures as "home décor advice", jokingly referring to him as more of an interior decorator than a writer or poet. Indeed, for many provincial Canadians at the time, his lectures were just that: speculations on curtains and wallpaper patterns, rather than a grander aesthetic movement. Coming from a man whose last words were "either the wallpaper goes or I do," one could almost excuse the mockery made by male-dominated press of the late 19th century. It's humorous touches like these that make light of a sometimes-pretentious literary movement that was known to take itself too seriously.
Overall, Hart House Theatre's production of Stephen and Mr. Wilde incorporates humour, philosophy, and lavish language into a pretty package that Wilde himself would approve of.
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