#8. The Judas Kiss

Freddie Fox (Bosie) and Rupert Everett (Oscar)

The Judas Kiss by David Hare

Premiere: Playhouse Theatre, London (12 March 1998)

Published by Faber Plays

David Hare's play about Oscar Wilde's last moments of freedom before first imprisonment and then exile was recently revived at the Hampstead Theatre in a very popular production which transferred to the Duke of York's, starring Rupert Everett as the (in)famous Irish wit and an appropriately beautiful supporting cast including Freddie Fox as Bosie. Wilde's genius is enduring and his writing as popular and entertaining as ever, which led me to wonder if Hare's play would live up to inevitable comparison. 

Hare takes two true key turning points in Wilde's life. The first is the day he chose to stay in England and face imprisonment at the hands of charges of gross indecency. The second is the moment he is betrayed by the one for whom he sacrificed everything.

Freddie Fox (Bosie)

It is initially a slow-burn, taking rather a while to get going, frittering about in the panic of servants and managers in the hotel where Wilde and his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas - known as Bosie, have been staying. There is perhaps fun to be had with this in performance, but at least on the page it feels like an inane prelude to what is the really gripping stuff. There is also a perplexingly heteronormative opening that jars slightly with a play that is pervadingly about others. That said, it does ground the famed and almost ungraspable icon in a sense of the everyday. It also serves as a nice foil to the heightened emotions and dialogue between Bosie and Oscar which follow. 

"The everyday world is shrouded. We see it dimly. Only when we love do we see the true person. The truth of a person is only visible through love. Love is not the illusion. Life is." Oscar

Like all great theatrical heroes, Wilde is the last one to arrive, but is spoken about in great depth beforehand. Once he does arrive, Hare does not falter for even a moment. It becomes one of the most gripping pieces of writing I have had the pleasure of reading in recent months. 

From here on the first act motors through at the speed of Oscar Wilde's mercurial mind, as the threat of arrest grows, with Robbie Ross - Wilde's "oldest friend" - begging him to leave for Europe and Bosie, perhaps Wilde's greatest love, imploring him to stay and fight the prosecution. Wilde gets swiftly drunk, constantly pulled to and fro by his various companions who all allege to be arguing with his best interests at heart. For Wilde, though, it is Bosie who is most important. Bosie's youth and aristocratic vigour persuade Wilde that to leave would be to admit weakness, to provide the establishment with what they want, to hammer what seems to be the final nail in his own coffin. 

Freddie Fox (Bosie) and Tom 
Colley (Galileo)

Act Two takes us to the Italian villa in which Oscar and Bosie are taking refuge from the world after Oscar's release - Bosie in the arms of handsome (but simple) Italian men, and Oscar in the safety of a penniless exile with his lover. There is a marked change, even just in the rhythms of the dialogue in this act. It is snappier, sharper than the first act, which although pacy enjoys more indulgent passages. Both Wilde and Bosie are changed by the years, particularly Wilde whose incarceration was brutal. They are broke, cut off and outcast by all around them, but their connection seems stronger than ever.

Again, there is an impressive pace, and it feels even cattier than before with some great one liners - including Oscar pronouncing "We can't live on cock." The relationship has bedded in through the joint endeavour of cohabitation, and Hare finds this not in crass exposition but in the manner of their exchanges and the unspoken understandings that only emerge in couples of a certain vintage. 

Eventually though the financial and societal pressures, inextricably linked somehow, get too much. Oscar gives up everything for Bosie who, at the last, betrays him. Hare doesn't excuse Bosie, but nor does he damn him. Bosie is portrayed as being caught in a trap of self-denial, self-loathing, and aristocratic familial dependence. Simultaneously he chastises Wilde for not taking a public stand in defence of "Greek love", but also refuses to recognise or admit the true nature of himself, insisting that he was not made to forever love men as Oscar was but that it was an adolescent phase on which he has now chosen to close the door. His betrayal is complex and not lightly undertaken. The follow moments as the reality of this decision hits Oscar are uncompromisingly devastating; you see the small, fragile future Oscar had seen for himself shatter before his very eyes. The final cost of the betrayal is Oscar's loss of his art, of his voice. The page is blank. What could possibly be more painful?

Hare's triumph in writing the great poet is that he gracefully finds the wit, the intellect and the poetry without reducing him to mimicry of witticisms. He discovers instead a man of profound philosophy and deep thought whose disposition is to prioritise beauty, yes, but more so the beauty of love. His explorations of legacy and art are light-handed and yet of unparalleled scope.

Wilde's final assessment, in one of several astounding passages, is: "The everyday world is shrouded. We see it dimly. Only when we love do we see the true person. The truth of a person is only visible through love. Love is not the illusion. Life is." His revelation is affirmed just as Bosie's love dims. The poetic beauty in the best of these moments, never gratuitous, lives up to the depth of Wilde's writing itself. 

Hare writes with great honesty and passion. It is not an idealised portrait of a literary hero, but an unforgiving glimpse at a life of true greatness plagued by the injustice of an era. Hare's play is stunningly sophisticated; a masterpiece of playwriting that lives up to the memory of an icon. 

Rupert Everett (Oscar) and Freddie Fox (Bosie) in Neil Armfeld's 2012 revival

Buy on Amazon here.