ED2015 4/5 Reviews ED2015 Theatre Reviews

Wilde Without The Boy (Cahoots Theatre Company)

By Sarah Murphy | Published on Thursday 27 August 2015

Part denunciation, partly a love letter which can’t help itself, this adaptation of ‘De Profundis’ is a thing of smoulder and pathos. I’ve always seen the role of Wilde as inextricable from Stephen Fry’s 1997 portrayal, but not any more. Playing a heartbroken version of the literary dandy, Gerard Logan delivers epigrams, poeticisings and exquisitely-worded rants with a diction of velvet and thunder (a give-away sign he’s also a Shakespearean player par excellence). The performance glistens with masterfully-controlled indignation – never angsty or enraged, though, that would be “unbeautiful”. Logan is clearly in love with Wilde’s words, and he’ll make you fall in love too. “I must transform [everything] into a near-spiritual experience,” writes Wilde in ‘De Profundis’, and so he must.

Assembly Hall, until 31 Aug.
tw rating 4/5 | [Sarah Murphy]