I mentioned Constance in a previous post, and have tickets to go next week. I was intrigued by its description as “the world premiere of the only unproduced Oscar Wilde play”. But according to the Guardian this might not be a full drama that Wilde created.
The grandson of Oscar Wilde is accusing an Olivier award-winning theatre company of “dishonesty” over its claims that it is staging
Merlin Holland told the Guardian that his grandfather did no more than devise a “minimal” scenario – just a few paragraphs – for a drama called Constance, which Wilde jotted down in a letter of 1894. “He never wrote a word of the play.”
He disputes the claim by The King’s Head theatre in Islington, north London, that it is staging “a genuine, brand new, Oscar Wilde play”, which opens on Friday.
“It is dishonest to foist this on the public,” Holland said, because it is by other writers, based on the scenario. “The play should really have been billed as ‘A play based on an idea [scenario] by Oscar Wilde, written in French by Guillot de Saix, translated into English and further adapted by Charles Osborne’.”
