In his opening night speech, David Hallberg, Artistic Director of The Australian Ballet, promised the audience that the company’s latest work Oscar, its first commissioned full-length work in 20 years, is a work that “adhered to the moment, for today’s audience and today’s time.”
It may be a stretch to believe that a story about a gay Irish poet and playwright born on the other side of the world in 1854, during the era of strict Victorian morality, would feel contemporary to a Sydney audience in 2024. However, with just a little research, Hallberg’s declaration turns out to be surprisingly accurate. Indeed, what could be more modern-day Australia than a man who triggers his own downfall by commencing defamation proceedings against all logic and sound advice. While it’s common knowledge that Oscar Wilde was prosecuted by the State for acts of gross indecency, what’s less well known is the fact that – with far more cockiness than the circumstances warranted – Wilde started the litigation brawl by boldly suing the Marquess of Queensberry (the father of his 24-year-old lover) for libel, after he sent a public note that Wilde was a ‘posing sodomite’ (misspelled by the Marquess as ‘Somdomite’ – which sounds a bit like something you might find hanging in a cave).
Even accepting that the Marquess has been accurately described as an arrogant, ill-tempered, eccentric and mentally imbalanced Scottish nobleman best noted for developing rules for amateur boxing – who was clearly unnaturally obsessed with the gender of the company his son was keeping – litigating to disprove you’re a man sleeping with other men is a high risk move, when that’s exactly what you’re doing (enthusiastically, prolifically, en masse), and there’s scores of witnesses prepared to testify.
When Wilde found out those witnesses were to be called in support of a defence of truth, he withdrew his case. Critically, though, not until after giving occasionally witty but ultimately disastrous oral evidence, where he commenced by lying about his age and then launched into an extended monologue declaring that love between an older man and a younger man was perfect, beautiful, and the ‘noblest form of affection.’ Apart from sounding a bit like a bad date, it was also one of the worst own-goals in legal history. The prosecution was handed on a platter to the State, leading to Wilde’s two-year imprisonment in Reading gaol, bankruptcy, and ultimate death in Paris from meningitis in 1900.
Wilde’s trials are no tangent to this ballet, which is bookended by events in the Old Bailey, and stuffed with scenes of him languishing in a prison cell. This is as close as we get to structure in Oscar. Christopher Wheeldon, the ballet’s choreographer, is clear that it’s not a narrative ballet, more a collage. Watching Oscar is like a fever dream, interweaving his life and memories with two of his notable works: The Nightingale and the Rose, and The Picture of Dorian Gray. Wheeldon, a global choreographic darling, was commissioned to create Oscar from scratch, which once again brings him together with Joby Talbot as composer. Talbot’s score splices the two halves of Wilde’s life: pre and post downfall. The first half is decadent, opulent fin de siècle; the second depicts the stark walls of a prison cell. The orchestra blends with electrics and the real sounds of 19th century incarceration, including rattling chains and slamming doors.
No complaints can be made about the dancing or the aesthetics of Oscar. Jean-Marc Puissant’s costume and set designs evoke all the surface elegance of late Victorian society: pillars, arched windows, timber panelling, cascading trees, and a blinking moon overseeing it all. Jarryd Madden gives a compelling performance as Oscar. Ako Kondo is a standout as the nightingale. The corps is technically accomplished and committed.
My first criticism of Oscar, is that generally the movement vocabulary is flattened and one-dimensional. It’s telling that I perked up most during the ‘Molly Hall’ scenes, when dancers cartwheeled themselves over chairs, while others vaudeville high-kicked. Tragically, I had more of an emotional pull to some minor gymnastics than to the pas de deux between Oscar and his lover.
As for my second criticism, I echo Sir Matthew Bourne (whose Swan Lake is a work of pure gender-flipping genius). Though Bourne wasn’t speaking about Oscar, he has commented generally that an audience should be able to embrace a ballet without reading a synopsis beforehand. Dance takes the audience to a deeper place, beyond words.
I wondered if the use of an oral narrator in parts of Oscar was a tacit admission that the movement hadn’t quite stepped up to the heavy lifting essential to the storytelling, particularly to overcome the biases that remain – sadly, even in 2024 – when watching two men purport to fall in love on stage, in the historically heteronormative world of classical ballet. In addition to homophobia, it was always going to be a challenge to translate the story of a man who lived his life through words into the language of dance. References to writing are sprinkled throughout Oscar, including on the sets, and costumes. Ultimately, Oscar needed less text and more full-hearted movement to truly make this story soar.
