With Wilde's arrest, his hit plays running in London's West End were forced to close, and Wilde was reduced to penury. A second trial ended in a hung jury with Wilde's impassioned defense of "the love that dare not speak its name," prompting a third trial. In the third and decisive trial, Wilde was convicted and sentenced to two years imprisonment at hard labor. He was separated forever from his wife and children, and wrote very little for the rest of his life. In addition to Wilde, Douglas and Queensberry, characters ranging from Queen Victoria to London's rent boys, to a present-day academic are assembled to explore how history is made and how it can be so timely revisited in the theatre.
“Moises Kaufmann has woven an amazing piece with his telling of the Wilde trials and the great man’s eventual conviction for the ‘Love that dare not speak its name,’” offers Director Owen Niland. “Kaufman combines histories, memoirs, biographies, and Wilde’s own writings with newspaper and tabloid articles of the day to give an audience an immediate sense of what it was like to experience the world’s first “Trial of the Century” (the 19th Century, that is). This script is a singular opportunity for our extraordinary ensemble of actors to recount an important and timely tale of the conflict between art and morality, privacy and celebrity, all told with Wilde’s wry wit. Our Wilde, Andrew Uhlenhopp, brings a charm, honesty and vulnerability to a personality often rendered in caricature, and our eight-actor ensemble rounds out the production’s 40+ additional characters – judges, lawyers, rent-boys, journalists, George Bernard Shaw, and the Queen of England to name a few – associated with the trial. We’re pulling together a truly unique theatrical experience for our audiences at Firehouse Theater Company, this one is without a doubt not to be missed!”
Firehouse Theater Company is excited to present Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, running February 17 through March 17 at the John Hand Theater/Colorado Free University located at 7653 E. 1st Place in Denver. Performances are Friday and Saturday at 7:30 PM and Sunday at 2 PM. Tickets range from $20 to $23 and are available at the box office at (303) 562-3232 or www.FirehouseTheaterCompany.com.
