The Judas Kiss review, Hampstead Theatre/Tour

Rupert Everett as Oscar Wilde is the grande dame of gay costume drama. In David Hare's The Judas Kiss, he gives us a Wilde that is locked in the limbo between panto and pants off. On the eve of his incarceration in Reading Gaol for gross indecency, we find Wilde holed up at the Cadogan Hotel with his former love, Robbie Ross, and his current love, the impetuous poet Lord Alfred (Bosie) Douglas. Ross wants him to flee justice. Bosie, whose reputation rests on Wilde taking the rap, does not. So he doesn't.  That's the entire first half. His rejection by Bosie on his release, is the second.

Escariot up the khyber

There are no surprises in Hare's script and Neil Armfield's production compensates for the lack of drama or surprise by pushing the cast into overdrive. Freddy Fox as Bosie doesn't so much throw his toys out of the pram when he rages, as trash Hamleys. Everett, plumped up and uglied with a middle parting, is a cross between Barry Humphries and Toad dressed as the washerwoman. Confined to chairs for the entire production, he burbles in a voice that is pure Prince Charles in the greenhouse, communing through acerbic asides and loud sighs.

The whole piece is odd, but Everett's comic demeanour and elegant delivery are rather fun. What is perplexing, however, is that affairs of the heart can be presented with such a lack of it. It is hard, as the lights go down on a betrayed and disappointed Wilde, sitting abandoned in a rat-infested house on the Naples shore, to feel anything other than relief that the event is over.

In conclusion: Everett is always worth the ticket, but the production is drab, even with the odd naked body providing decoration. The set is lacklustre, the play is all fire and no heat, the characters are flat and we learn nothing.

References
Hampstead Theatre, buy tickets
UK Tour Dates


Hampstead Theatre is on Eton Avenue, Swiss Cottage, London NW3 3EU. This production is now over.