Image courtesy of DU Players
David Doyle-
The opening of the inaugural Oscar Wilde Festival on Monday by Rupert Everett, star of film versions of The Importance of Being Earnest and An Ideal Husband, seemed like a fitting start to the festival which seeks to bring the works of Oscar Wilde to a wider audience within Trinity. There is little doubt that Everett’s involvement with all things Wildean, on both stage and screen, has brought Wilde to a wider audience. However, his love of Wilde hasn’t always been to the fore.
Everett first encountered Oscar when as a child his mother used to read him The Happy Prince. However this early grounding in Wilde’s work didn’t leave him with a lasting love for it, and it wasn’t until drama school that he again encountered it. Everett freely admits that even then he wasn’t all that favourable towards Wilde, preferring instead to do productions with “babies being burnt in prams.” Yet when he began forging a theatrical career on the stage in Glasgow, he was reintroduced to Wilde through various productions. His love of Wilde has grown since then and continues today.
Indeed Everett’s next major goal is to direct and star in a film version of Wilde’s last days, which he wrote a number of years ago. For him, this period of Wilde’s life is the most interesting and the fact that films about Wilde’s life tend to end immediately after his incarceration is something which Everett aims to rectify. However given the nature of the film, which is to be filmed in several countries, funding has been problematic and Everett has had to turn to Germany to find it. With the funding now secured the film looks set to be made in the near future, and will surely bring Wilde to an even bigger audience than before.
The film is set to prove very interesting with Everett confident that he can play Wilde. A starring role will furnish his CV with a lead role, something which has been somewhat lacking for him. This lack of leading roles is something which he believes is down to his homosexuality, though he maintains that the movie industry is not a homophobic place to work in. Previously Everett has suggested that he regrets coming out, but his views seem to have softened somewhat. He instead suggests that he never came out as such, but rather just “went out”. Indeed, it seems that the Wildean roles that he has played have been largely down to his homosexuality. He suggested that he landed the roles because-for audiences-they are a role which a homosexual man could conceivably play.
No matter what the reasons for landing the roles, there is no doubt that Everett has done a great deal for bringing Wilde to a wider audience, and his opening of the festival seemed a fitting start to the campus-wide event which runs all this week.
