"de profundis" (oscar wilde) performed by corin redgrave

tuesday 1st july 2008

corin redgrave reads oscar wilde's
"de profundis"
edited by merlin holland
director ~ richard nelson

at lyttleton ,national theatre
http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/deprofundis

towards the end of his sentence in Reading Gaol, Wilde was agonising over the lack of contact with Bosie. In desperation, he started to write him a letter.

‘You came to me to learn the pleasure of life and the pleasure of art. Perhaps I am chosen to teach you something more wonderful – the meaning of sorrow and its beauty.’

It is perhaps the greatest love letter ever written. Filled with a torrent of accusation, recrimination and passion, Wilde eventually reached an extraordinary state of understanding and reconciliation. A century later De Profundis remains an astonishing tour-de-force of self analysis.
Reviving his National Theatre performance from 2000, Corin Redgrave reads De Profundis.
Running time is approximately 2 hours 15 minutes including interval.
Merlin Holland is Oscar Wilde's grandson.

at the end of this show i was a little bemused to hear all redgrave's fans calling bravo as he frail-y but determinedly re-mounted his podium to receive the lengthy ovations - this had seemed at first rather old fashioned stuff, full of eloquence and style but delivering little (m wondered if it was a little like it must have been seeing Michael Macliammor perform)
but in fact this was quite gentle - and happily not at all over-performed
at first in fact i thought i would have liked a stronger performance - more bitterness/ more camp? - but on reflection i think what redgrave gave us allowed me to dwell on the man behind the words and the thinking and wonder more about who he was and how he felt than to lock into the energy of the wit, the iconography, the symbolism of what he has come to stand for and against. this is very much a piece of 'thinking out loud' with a sense that wilde is working out his thinking as he writes rather than declaiming previously invented notions. and he is in this a man surprisingly free of bitterness, touchjed with self-irony along with the pique and real understanding: he is no Lear to rail against the fates of god and man but rather full of a deep wisdom and caring of what it is to be human.

a soft haunting performance that has crept into me rather by surprise

bette bourne in "rock" by tim fountain

thursday 12th june 2008

ROCK
by Tim Fountain.
Starring Bette Bourne.
Directed by Tamara Harvey
Designed by Morgan Large.

bette bourne as henry wilson
michael xavier as roy fitzgerald (rock hudson)

Rock is co-commissioned by Homotopia and Glasgay! Funded by Arts Council England.
Oval House Theatre
http://www.ovalhouse.com/cn/event_details.php?sectionid=theatre&eventid=261&searchid=current

Rock Hudson was the biggest screen idol in 1950's LA - the ultimate Hollywood hunk. But his career was perpetually under threat from Confidential Magazine, every gay actor's nemesis: and only one man stood between stardom and oblivion. Rock is the story of Henry Willson, the man who made a star of Rock Hudson; the most unscrupulous agent in Los Angeles; the man who would do anything to protect his money-spinning protégé.
Starring the incomparable Bette Bourne and written by Tim Fountain - the team
behind Resident Alien, the hit play about Quentin Crisp - Rock brings the seamy
world of 1950's Hollywood to vivid life.

Tim Fountain’s fascinating, apparently true-life play views the dilemma of being gay in 1950s Hollywood from the differing perspectives of Roy Fitzgerald, a hick young man who aspires to be a film star, and Henry Willson, a famous agent, who triumphantly subjects him to a Pygmalion-like process of change. Tamara Harvey’s sensitively nuanced production, enhanced by a sombre Edward Hopperish office and Hockneyish pop art view of Hollywood designed by Morgan Large, creates just the right mood. When young Roy, played by Michael Xavier, appears in Willson’s office, he seems about as much male sex-symbol material as Kenneth Williams. He is high-voiced, physically awkward and tentative. Yet Willson, the maestro of abrasive, outspoken cynicism in the charismatic, comic performance of Bette Bourne sees movie potential in his looks and physique. The business of converting Roy Fitzgerald into Rock Hudson, of making the cissie-boy butch, is accomplished in over-compressed scenes of high comedy. Xavier, a real theatrical discovery, charts the masculinisation procedure with convincing assurance. The impassive Willson, to whom Bourne lends the perfect air of closeted misanthropy, revels in showing Rock how to walk tall and speak with low-voiced confidence. Thanks to Willson’s publicising flair, Rock is quickly launched upon his career as a star, though it is not long before he consents to marriage to stem the tide of malign whispers. Fountain conveys a vivid impression of the witch-hunting, McCarthyite times, with gay male stars under surveillance. Yet he needs to probe deeper and explain more about the impact of 1950s homophobia on the two men and their private lives. There are psychological, sexual and political matters left unexplored in this evocation of a Hollywood that 50 years on still keeps gay stars in closets.
Nicholas De Jongh, Evening Standard — 30th May 2008

The title of Tim Fountain's two-hander is ambiguous. Does it refer to the movie star Rock Hudson, the 50s housewife's pin-up who never admitted to his homosexuality, and who died of Aids in 1985? Or is the rock of the title the Hollywood agent Henry Wilson, who discovered Hudson and transformed him from the gawky Illinois hick, Roy Fitzgerald, into the highest-paid star in the world, in the process both ruthlessly exploiting his client and protecting him from the FBI and Confidential Magazine, who were determined to out Rock as gay? Wilson was Rock's rock, until he gradually crumbled away, his reputation eroded by drink and scandal. Wilson is played by Bette Bourne, who crumbles better than any actor I know. It is as if he is collapsing from the inside out. Entire landslides take place on his face during the course of a single sentence. He captures Wilson's essential sharkiness ("I find out what the market wants and I deliver it") and then makes you want to take the shark home and look after it.
To be honest, Fountain's play looks more like an outline than a play itself. But although thin, it is entertaining enough as we watch Michael Xavier's reedy-voiced Roy become macho Rock, posing as an Oscar statuette in gold body paint to get the media's attention and then trying to throw them off the scent of his sexuality by marrying Wilson's secretary, Phyllis. Like the body paint, Fountain's script is all glitter and not enough substance. Bourne supplies the latter, but with a more robust script this might have been a piercing look at celebrity, homophobia and the relationship between a modern Frankenstein and his monster.
Lyn Gardiner, Guardian — 9th June 2008