'The Judas Kiss,' Hampstead Theatre, review
From the article:
"I feared the worst about the second coming of 'The Judas Kiss,' a play roundly sniffed at when the Almeida premiered it at the Playhouse in 1998. Few were impressed by Liam Neeson as Oscar Wilde, few had praise for Richard Eyre as director, and David Hare was deemed to have produced a real tortoise of an evening, "often numbingly dull, with both emotion and jokes in alarmingly short supply", as Charles Spencer complained in the Telegraph. I can't say the prospect of seeing Rupert Everett assume the mantle of Wilde's genius at Hampstead put much hope in my heart; and yet Australian director Neil Armfield gives us not so much a revival as a miraculous rehabilitation. "
"I feared the worst about the second coming of 'The Judas Kiss,' a play roundly sniffed at when the Almeida premiered it at the Playhouse in 1998. Few were impressed by Liam Neeson as Oscar Wilde, few had praise for Richard Eyre as director, and David Hare was deemed to have produced a real tortoise of an evening, "often numbingly dull, with both emotion and jokes in alarmingly short supply", as Charles Spencer complained in the Telegraph. I can't say the prospect of seeing Rupert Everett assume the mantle of Wilde's genius at Hampstead put much hope in my heart; and yet Australian director Neil Armfield gives us not so much a revival as a miraculous rehabilitation. "
