Although he has been dead for over 116 years now, Ireland’s most famous playwright and homosexual Oscar Wilde is still as popular as ever. He was one of the wittiest men that ever lived on this planet and as well as all his plays and books he threw out such marvelous bon mots like queerguru’s all-time favorite We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
Now there is a hit revival of the 1998 British play by David Hare, called The Judas Kiss about Oscar Wilde‘s scandal and disgrace at the hands of his young lover Bosie (Lord Alfred Douglas). Starring an almost unrecognizable Rupert Everett who is getting some of the best reviews of his career for his performance as Wilde. Currently playing in Toronto’s Ed Mirvish Theatre until May 1st and then it transfers to Brooklyn’s BAM for a month from May 11th.
Everett, never one to hold back from speaking his mind, has often commented somewhat bitterly that being an openly gay actor seriously limited his career. He has however found ‘Oscar’ to a good provider of work. Everett collected his second Golden Globe Nomination for his performance in An Ideal Husband, and two years later starred in the movie version of The Importance of Being Earnest. Next up after his current run is a passion project called The Happy Prince (borrowing its title from the fairy tale) that he has been working on for the past 8 years which is his own movie about Wilde, which he has written and will star in.
Meanwhile there is a very new tongue-in-cheek and oh-so-gay adaption of Wilde’s only novel The Picture of Dorian Grey that is about to hit our screens. The original story was about selling one’s soul so that Dorian’s portrait will fade and age so that he will not which seems the perfect subject for the basis of this new gay web-series. The filmmakers however have added another twist to their production by making their protagonist a very handsome African/American. Here’s a sneak preview of Dorian Gray one of the most highly-anticipated LGBT series of the season especially for all those peeps who are still wild about Wilde.
