Feasting with Panthers (Broadway Theatre Archive)

Rating:
Summary: "Feasting with panthers...danger was half of the excitement."
Review: Written by Adrian Hall and Richard Cumming, this 1974 play, directed by Rick Hauser and author Adrian Hall takes full advantage of its commission as a TV production, achieving its power in ways not even possible on the stage. Produced for WNET Theater in America, the directors make full use of the close-up and subtle gesture, illuminating the agonies of Oscar Wilde during his two-year imprisonment in Reading Gaol. Wilde (Richard Kneeland) has finally been convicted after three trials for "gross indecency," or as it was also called, "the love that dared not speak its name." With Jobeth Williams as his heart-broken wife, the play ranges through Wilde's memories, as fragments of remembered events, bits of the trials, thoughts of his wife and children, musings about his writing, and his obsession with "Bosie" Douglas, son of the Marquis of Queensbury, unfold.

Powerful scenes reflect the mind of the prisoner--his hysteria at being put into solitary because of his fear of the dark, his stunned disbelief that his wife and children have changed their names and moved, his frustration over having no writing implements to give form to his thoughts, his tormented recollections of scenes from his books. With no linear story line to convey a narrative, the authors and director use other bridges between scenes. Silent prisoners wear masks, their movements choreographed to give the rhythm of their shuffling feet a kind of drumbeat that waxes and wanes. Prisoners go up and down a spiral staircase into and out of the light, with the lock step movements of prisoners everywhere. Music connects some scenes, a prisoners' chorus and a folk song summarizing the woes of the downtrodden, written by co-author Richard Cumming.

"There is a time when a man must choose between living his own life, full, totally, completely," or, Wilde ultimately declares, "dragging out some meaningless, false, shallow existence that society with all its hypocrisies demands." Though his life and reputation are in tatters as a result of this trial, his supporters believe that "a whole society has been changed because of you." As one friend remarks, "Your pen can bring the world to its knees." A stunning glimpse into the mind of this controversial writer who was imprisoned for daring to challenge Victorian hypocrisy, this lively and thoughtful production uses impressionistic techniques to convey the agony of Wilde's imprisonment and its effects on the age. Mary Whipple