In Extremis
Bewley’s Cafe Theatre, Dublin
★★★☆☆
The London apartment of Bewley’s Cafe Theatre’s latest production, with its windows blocked by drapes and its furniture concealed beneath sheets, seems to have gone untouched for decades. We see a woman passing the threshold, lifting the cloths off ornate furnishings – and teasing long-awaited answers to an old mystery.
The society palmist Mrs Robinson, “the Sibyl of Mortimer Street” (neatly played by Gene Rooney), may have been popular with the divination-curious scenesters of Victorian London, but she also left behind a nagging curiosity for biographers of Oscar Wilde.
“He had his hand read by a fortune-teller,” the writer Vincent O’Sullivan relayed. “They told him, ‘I see a very brilliant life for you up to a certain point. Then I see a wall. Beyond the wall I see nothing.’”
Among those who have interpreted this forecast is the playwright Neil Bartlett, who, as the Latin of his play’s title suggests, presents ghostly versions of the Londoners – “Both of us are 100 years dead” – re-enacting their meeting while addressing modern audiences.
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Mrs Robinson gives an introduction to palmistry – insisted to be a real science, but not one without trade secrets on how best to interact with customers. That’s intriguing but instructive; there’s far more grit to watching two performers fluent in artifice trying to outsmart each other.
“I should warn you I’m not unaccustomed with the ways of charlatans,” Wilde says, in a well-considered delivery by Conor Hanratty. “I regularly provide employment for some of the most accomplished charlatans in London.”
Bartlett, a studied interpreter of Wilde – he conceived and directed the Abbey Theatre’s 2012 production of The Picture of Dorian Gray – rolls out his own epigrams. “These are the hands of a very charming man,” Mrs Robinson says, relying on Wilde’s well-known tabloid celebrity. “Charm, like wit, is a myth invented by handsome people to account for the peculiar social success of the ugly,” he responds. Yeesh!
Joan Sheehy’s production impressively folds such comedy-of-manners swipes within the otherworldly ambience of a ghost story. It becomes increasingly difficult to believe, however, as Bartlett’s characterisation turns fuzzy, and Mrs Robinson begins to resemble a court witness changing their story.
“I had no idea what was going to happen,” she explains, trying to judge how best to give Wilde a prediction while he’s dreading his trial. Yet Bartlett does give her a premonition, interpreting the “future hitting a wall” comment as a vision of the playwright seen declining in sickness and misery in Reading Gaol. She re-examines her actions, looking for answers by turning to the audience, turning to Wilde: “Did I lie?” (Don’t ask me!)
There’s a sense Bartlett’s motive lies more in the joyride romance between Wilde and Alfred Douglas. The links between Mrs Robinson’s assessment and the playwright’s declarations of love are tenuous, but there’s no denying the impressive beauty. “I can you see you in the morning with the sun behind you, making you all a glory of gilt and ivory,” Wilde says. Swoon.
In Extremis is at Bewley’s Cafe Theatre, Dublin, until Saturday, August 16th
