"Too Gay? Or Not Too Gay?"

Des Keogh Is Oscar's Bosie At The Irish Repertory Theatre

By Sean McCarthy N.U.J.

An old familiar liveliness in my step down West 22nd Street between 6th and 7th Avenues followed my ninety minutes of being entirely spellbound at New York's Irish Repertory Theatre by the hypnotic Irish actor Des Keogh, whose mesmerizing performance onstage of Lord Alfred Douglas, a.k.a. Oscar Wilde's gay lover Bosie, is drawing the crowds out in droves and packing the house with a drenching of wet tea and a doily-draped tray of delightfully specific buns. And sure why not! Onstage, Oscar Wilde's lover Bosie is telling the story not like it was, but like it actually is, as he recollects in real time and in clockmaker's detail the love affair of the century, with no holds barred. And sure who needs Queensbury Rules anyway when you're dealing with an old queen herself? Besides, after well over a century now, the then scandalous love affair between Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas is still raising the rafters and feeding the whispers a'plenty. You mean there "is" such a thing as a gay Irishman? Shocking stuff altogether! "Quickly! Pull those drapes and get down on yer knees for forgiveness!"

"Homosexuality was illegal in England at the time. It was a criminal offense," Des Keogh reminds us. "But of course Oscar Wilde was such a flamboyant character and he got away with a lot because of his genius and because of his incredible talent at writing and also because of his colourful lifestyle. Lord Alfred Douglas' father, who was the Marquis of Queensbury, was absolutely devastated that his son was associated with Oscar Wilde and was being seen around London with him, and it was he (the Marquis of Queensbury) who put the cat among the pigeons so to speak and accused Wilde of being a 'sodomite', which was the word that was used at that time. Wilde was up in court and sent to prison for two years for these homosexual activities, and that had a devastating effect on him at the time because he suffered very much in prison," Keogh explains.

My Scandalous Life written by Thomas Kilroy and directed by John Going is enjoying its World Premiere at the Irish Rep, and sees the mercurial Des Keogh team up with a frothy feisty Fiana Toibin, daughter of legendary Irish actor Niall Toibin, who plays a flustered red-haired portly Irish maid with dizzying stamina and an enormous stage presence. Unseen upstairs behind two large parlour doors, Olive, wife of Lord Douglas, is dying. Later in the timeline of the play, we are introduced through clever sound and reference to a mentally delirious Raymond, Bosie's only son, whose spasmodic pangs are heard hurling from the boudoir in shockwaves when least expected. Here's a gem of a play as entertaining as it is insightful, as hilarious as it is heart-breaking, and all so skillfully performed by two of Ireland's most masterful actors. Des Keogh brings us a timeless Lord Alfred Douglas with jaw-dropping skill and precision, whilst Fiana Toibin's rollecking Irish Maid delivers a punch right to the gut of the stage.

As we sit sipping refreshments in his dressing room at the Irish Rep after the performance, I open our conversation by suggesting to the renowned actor that his role as Lord Alfred Douglas in My Scandalous Life is a rather complicated one really, isn't it?

"It is," says Des Keogh. "And it's one that I think people know very little about. Certainly people interested in Oscar Wilde know about Bosie and the affair when Bosie was a very young man. But they don't know that, after Oscar Wilde died, Bosie, Lord Alfred Douglas, went on to get married, to have a son, and to live to the age of seventy-five. When this play takes place, Bosie is in fact one year before his death. It is an interesting role, and one that people are becoming interested in, to find out that he had, in fact, a life after Oscar Wilde. And also another thing that they don't know about him was that he was a very highly regarded poet in his own right. He's an interesting character I think."

My Scandalous Life brings us back to Second World War-torn 1944 and opens on a port-sipping, slipper-flapping, ginger bun-nipping Bosie, who is held up in an apartment overseeing his wife's demise upstairs. Tormented with memories of his scandalous homosexual love affair with Oscar Wilde, Bosie pours over the mysteries of his own identity, and thrashes through the deluge of scandal left in the wake of the world press attention his affair with Wilde had attracted. "The love that dare not speak its name" as Oscar Wilde had written, haunts Bosie like a bleeding wound, painful and tragic as he himself faces into old age.

Eternally linked to Wilde, the scandal of their love, the violent trials that led to Wilde's imprisonment, the guilt, and the subsequent half a century he lived after Oscar Wilde's own lonely death in Paris in 1900, Bosie searches for the very personal meaning of a life forever the subject of endless conjecture. Des Keogh's Lord Douglas plunges the audience into unexpected depths of feelings, as he copes with his marriage to Olive, his memories of Oscar, and the tragic fate of his only son Raymond.

"Bosie renounced his homosexuality completely," explains Des Keogh with insight. "And in fact, in some ways, he became very homophobic in his outlook. It's an interesting fact too that the lady he married Olive Custance also had sexual ambiguity, and she had a couple of affairs with women. So there was this interesting parallel between the two characters. In the play, Bosie is going through a very bad time. Olive, with whom he has kept in touch, and has loved even though they haven't lived together for many years, is dying. But his main concern is his son, who has turned out to be mentally unstable and has been in a mental institution for many years. When the play takes place, his son is forty two years of age and Bosie is absolutely tormented by this, and whether or not this is in the genes and whether or not his son has picked up this mental instability from him ... which is probably very likely because there was a great deal of mental instability in the Douglas family. This because apparent towards the end of the play," hints Keogh.

My Scandalous Life delivers the goods on a thoroughly engaging story with a generous peppering of unexpected, poingant moments onstage. Director Jack Going has fine tuned this play with a razor-sharp precision made even more effective my Keogh's seemingly inate gift of timing. Watch Keogh's eyes and hands.

"Jack Going is a director with whom I have worked before on a few plays," says Keogh. "I worked with Jack on a lovely play called The Best of Friends an English play with the lovely Irish actress Pauline Flanagan. He is a meticulous director, and had a great feeling for this subject, and he has directed a play before about Oscar Wilde and knows very much about Oscar. He didn't know very much about Lord Alfred Douglas, but read up a great deal, as I did, before we did this play. When I read and became interested in this play My Scandalous Life, I showed it to Jack Going, and he at first cited first reading, he loved the play, and said he would love to direct me in it. So it was he in fact who approached the Irish Rep and said that he would love to do this play with me. That's how it came about. We've had a good time working on it."

So what happened exactly to Oscar Wilde? Well, following his sentencing on the 25th of May 1895, Wilde was imprisoned, first in Pentonville and then Wandsworth prisons in London. The regime at the time was horribly tough, with the guiding philosophy for the treatment of inmates quoted as being "hard labour, hard fare and a hard bed". Prison life wore particularly harshly on Wilde, seeing as he was a gentleman, and his worldly status provided him with no special privileges. Indeed, he was so weak from illness and hunger that he collapsed in the gaol's chapel, bursting his right ear drum, an injury that would later contribute directly to Oscar Wilde's death.

"When Wilde came out he was never the same man again," tells Keogh. "He never really recovered from that, and died at a very early age in his early forties. People are fascinated by that, and they are fascinated because of the genius. Wilde was of course Irish, he was an Irishman from Dublin. People are fascinated by this because he was the first famous homosexual sent to prison for his activities."

All bun-nibbling aside, My Scandalous Life is a tour de force right in the heart of Chelsea. The play is being staged in cozy quarters downstairs at the W. Scott Mc Lucas Studio Theatre inside the Irish Rep, with a lavish set design by Charlie Corcoran, authentic period costumes by David Toser, creatively effective lighting by Michael O'Connor, intricate sound design by Zachary Williamson, and page-turning stage management by the gifted Michael Palmer.

My Scandalous Life runs to March 6th so be advised to see it soon. The play also enjoys the distinction of receiving support from Culture Ireland as part of the brand new arts initiative Imagine Ireland recently unveiled by Cultural Ambassador for Ireland, the award-winning actor Gabriel Byrne.

General Admission tickets are only $30 which is a great price for all that unfolds onstage, with show times running Wednesday through Saturday at 8pm and Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday at 3pm. Purchase your tickets right now at www.irishrep.org or call the Irish Repertory Theatre at 212 727-2737

Tune into America's Only Irish Station RADIOIRISH.COM for a specially extended audio interview with actor Des Keogh, also being broadcast on Facebook at: www.facebook.com/radioirish