Oscar Wilde
Immateriality – or irrelevance?
In The Importance of Being Earnest Jack Worthing was given his surname by Mr Thomas Cardew, who happened to have…
A ghost at the feast: The LaLee at the Cadogan hotel, reviewed
The Cadogan hotel, Chelsea, is where Oscar Wilde was arrested for sodomy and gross indecency in 1895, in Room 118,…
Xenophobic twaddle: Bush Theatre's 2036 reviewed
The Bush Theatre’s new strand, 2036, opens with a monologue, Pawn, which takes its name from the most downtrodden piece…
Promising material squandered: BKLYN – The Musical reviewed
BKLYN — The Musical gives itself a headache for no reason. What does ‘BKLYN’ mean? Perhaps it’s a random jumble…
Flower power: symbols of romance and revolution
Critics have argued over the meaning of the great golden flower head to which Van Dyck points in his ‘Self-Portrait…
The gloriously indecent life and art of Aubrey Beardsley
In seven short years, Aubrey Beardsley mastered the art of outrage. Laura Gascoigne on the gloriously indecent illustrations of a singular genius
Naomi Wolf is holed below the waterline
What is it about Naomi Wolf that inspires such venom? Perhaps that she’s American, brash, media-savvy and not averse to…
Is there a funnier opera than Gerald Barry’s Importance of Being Earnest?
Comic opera is no laughing matter. Seriously, when was the last time you laughed out loud in the opera house?…
The rotten fruits of Peter Maxwell Davies’s modernism
The intransigence of Maxwell Davies, Boulez and Stockhausen is coming home to roost. Here were three composers, famous if not…
Aphorisms and the arts: from Aristotle to Oscar Wilde
The author of this jam-packed treasure trove has been a film critic at the New York Times since 2000 and…
Barry Humphries’s diary: My war with ‘Wow!’
I’m counting ‘Wows!’ Suddenly everyone is using this irritating expletive expressing incredulity, amazement and nothing at all. I’ve heard it…
Rain, shine and the human imagination — from Adam and Eve to David Hockney
‘Pray don’t talk to me about the weather, Mr Worthing,’ pleads Gwendolen in The Importance of Being Earnest. ‘Whenever people…
Oscar Wilde, Christine Keeler, Ivor Novello and Isambard Kingdom Brunel make unexpected companions on the Great Western
Readers who have put in some time on the railways may remember the neat, brush-painted graffiti that appeared in 1974…
Oscar Wilde and the marvellous boy
The prodigious brilliance, blaring public ruin, dismal martyrdom and posthumous glory of Oscar Wilde’s reputation are almost too familiar. The…
Those ancient Greeks were bores — but things are looking up
Thick snow is falling hard and heavy, muffling sounds and turning the picturesque village postcard beautiful. I am lying in…
Barry Humphries’s diary: The bookshop ruined by Harry Potter
Do fish have loins? Last Tuesday, in a pretentious restaurant, I ordered a ‘loin of sea trout’. It looked just…
The Silver Tassie: a lavish, experimental muddle that slithers into a coma
The Silver Tassie is the major opening at the Lyttelton this spring. Sean O’Casey’s rarely staged play introduces us to…
How honest was Bernard Berenson?
Sam Leith suspects that even such a distinguished connoisseur as Bernard Berenson did not always play a straight bat
