The Importance of Being Oscar - 2017 Performances

The “Importance of Being Oscar” by Irish playwright Micheál mac Líammóir, not to be confused with “The Importance of Being Ernest”, was written in the late 1950s and was first performed in 1960 by Mr. mac Líammóir himself. Actor Paul Rapsey performed this challenging play in Cobourg and Warkworth Ontario in 2017 to great acclaim.

The play is a monologue in two Acts about the magnificent but tragic life of Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900). Wilde was an Irish playwright, novelist, essayist and poet in the late Victorian period. He achieved fame at a very young age, but it was notoriety that was his downfall. 

Wilde had a very public and torrid relationship with the son of an aristocrat, the 9^th Marquis of Queensbury, whose name is given to the rules of boxing. Queensbury set out to destroy Oscar Wilde with the aid of the English establishment, which had taken umbrage at Wilde’s witty, very public and literary critique of their outdated social norms and moral hypocrisy. And destroy him they did. They found their foil in a draconian piece of legislation enacted in 1885 when Wilde was in his heyday. This law was intentionally aimed at bringing ruin and public disgrace to male homosexuals. In all, over  50,000 gay men were convicted between the law’s inception and its repeal in 1967. Most went to prison, some committed suicide, and virtually all had their lives destroyed. That law had been adopted in Canada and was repealed here in 1969 when Pierre Elliot Trudeau was Prime Minister. It was only on 31 January 2017, that Oscar Wilde and these 50,000 other men were posthumously pardoned in England and Wales. Perhaps it is too little too late, but some will say “better late than never”. Canada has yet to follow suit although the development of a formal “apology” is in the works under Canada’s present Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau.

The play is in a sense a dramatic lecture – the sort that Oscar Wilde may have delivered. The story is sad, but it is peppered with humour thanks largely to Oscar Wilde himself. The actor, Paul Rapsey, took on many characters in this hour and half long presentation, which contains snippets of Wilde’s writings. This is a rehearsal video of Act 1, Scene 1: Oscar - Act 1 Scene 1 Rehearsal.
Mr. Rapsey is best known locally for his 2016 performance of “Bed Among the Lentils”, a monologue by British playwright Alan Bennett, which ran last year in various venues in Ontario, Nova Scotia and England. Rapsey undertakes plays that challenge him in productions that will also challenge an audience. 

He hopes to ignite an audience’s imagination with a play’s words, rather than relying on pyro techniques. Mr. Rapsey says we have come a long way since 1967, but it has been a slow process and remains an incomplete one. There are far too many people who still live closeted lives, afraid or ashamed to be who they are; far too many gay youth on the streets, shunned by their families, and far too many gay youth suicides, tormented by bullies both individuals and systemic. It is not enough to change laws, one must change people’s awareness, their preconceptions and their misconceptions, Rapsey says. He hopes that the words of Polonius in Shakespeare’s classic play “Hamlet” will one day resonate: “to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.”