About This Show
The National presents a limited run of two plays, with Corin Redgrave as Wilde.
In Extremis, a new play by Neil Bartlett, tells of the night of 24 March 1895 when Mrs Robinson a society palm reader, agreed to see Oscar Wilde in her London flat. Wilde’s lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, “Bosie,” was urging him to sue the Marquis of Queensberry (Bosie’s father) for criminal libel. But Wilde’s friends, wary of Queensberry’s power, were warning him to leave town. The show reveals the strange turmoil of that night, as a man at the height of his fame turns to a complete stranger for advice about a potentially life-changing decision.
De Profundis, by Oscar Wilde, takes place two years later. Towards the end of his sentence in Reading Gaol, Wilde was agonizing over the lack of contact with Bosie. In desperation, he started to write him a letter.
It is perhaps the greatest love letter ever written. Filled with a torrent of accusation, recrimination, and passion, Wilde eventually reached an extraordinary state of under-standing and reconciliation.