The Toronto Theatre Review: A return to Soulpepper’s musical fantasy reaffirms the enduring force of Wilde’s prison letter, with Miller giving voice to its wit, anguish, vanity, and extraordinary capacity for love.
By Ross
Oscar Wilde, that magnificent, maddeningly witty man whose words could make an entire room sit up straight, even when he was busy dismantling its pretensions, defies easy explanations. He occupies a world entirely of his own making, one shaped by the brilliance of his language and the contradictions of his personality. Even now, the story of his trial continues to devastate me. I was completely taken with De Profundis: Oscar Wilde in Jail when I first saw it in 2024, with Damien Atkins giving a sublime performance as the imprisoned writer. With Atkins and Rick Miller currently alternating the role in this return to Soulpepper, I felt particularly fortunate to have caught Miller, even while knowing that Atkins would undoubtedly have been magnificent in the part once again. And to see another take on this role is quite the gift. Originally premiering at Soulpepper Theatre Company under the direction of playwright Gregory Prest (Tarragon’s Bremen Town), this musical fantasy takes Wilde’s dense, poetic prose and gives it a remarkable theatrical life. As the jail door clangs shut, we are pulled into the isolation and destitution, a confinement that will give birth to one of the most extraordinary letters ever written.
Miller (Soulpepper’s Present Laughter) has the daunting task of carrying the production through its entire 100 minutes, sentenced to remain on stage as he shifts between Wilde’s many moods and the figures who populate his recollections. He moves with extraordinary fluidity, turning from the wounded and furious lover to the flamboyant wit, the self-proclaimed artist, and the man struggling to understand the extent of his own responsibility for his downfall. The physical demands are considerable, with movement choreography by Indrit Kasapi adding a dense additional layer to the performance. Miller expertly navigates the intricate vocal passages that give this musical its distinctive pulse. I remember how completely Atkins commanded the stage in 2024, and Miller now makes the role his own with a performance that is beautifully assured, emotionally exposed, and alive to every delicious turn of Wilde’s language. Miller finds room for it all, from the delicious humour and vanity to the explosive anger and terrible ache that pounds alongside his heart.
Composed by Mike Ross, with lyrics by Sarah Wilson, the score brings an unexpected and vibrant variety of musical styles to Wilde’s philosophical reflections and bitter recollections. The music has a remarkable instinct for knowing when to punctuate the prose, when to let a thought gather momentum, and when to give a captive emotion a different kind of expression altogether. The letter itself is an extraordinary work of artistry, its density of language shaped under the most restrictive circumstances. Wilde was permitted only one page of writing materials each day, and the determination to make every available inch count seems almost impossible to separate from the verbal abundance we hear unfolding on stage. His phrases are packed with beauty, fury, wit, and self-recrimination, sometimes within a single breath. The thought of those handwritten pages being created in the confines of a prison cell, by an artist determined to keep working even as the world outside seemed to have decided his life and reputation were finished, strikes hard. A fascinating video of Andrew Scott examining Wilde’s manuscript with an expert at the British Library offers a glimpse of those handwritten pages, bringing us closer to the physical document behind all this extraordinary language brought to life on stage.
Standing just beyond Wilde’s grasp is Lord Alfred Douglas, known as Bosie, portrayed magnificently by Colton Curtis (ShawFest’s Sweet Charity), who gives the production another compelling centre of gravity, his buttoned-up, proper demeanour making complete sense. As Wilde’s beautiful and deeply complicated lover, Curtis gives a performance that is hauntingly physical, with movement that seems to hold several conflicting truths at once. At times, Curtis takes on an almost Christ-like presence, his face and body carrying the possibility of both divine innocence and something far more troubling, depending on the gaze he turns on Wilde. The two men exchange looks filled with such shifting temperatures of adoration, anger, longing, and contempt that it becomes difficult to know precisely what Bosie believes or feels. We may want to cast him as the villain, given the destruction that followed their relationship and the way it seems he used Wilde, but Wilde’s own account is so saturated with hurt and self-reproach that Bosie becomes the vessel for nearly every shade of love and detestation. Curtis gives this silent, often elusive presence a remarkable physical vocabulary, allowing the emotional complications of their relationship to occupy the stage even when Wilde is the one doing the speaking.
Standing to the side, Jonathan Corkal-Astorga’s Robbie Ross is the quiet, steady presence that Wilde needs, watching with attentive care as the jail door clangs shut. His protective nature radiates from the sidelines, filling the room with a reassuring sense of security as Wilde is drawn deeper into the darkness of his own recollections. We feel the comfort of knowing that Ross is there, watching over him and offering him his first note, even as the prison walls close in and the emotional ground beneath Wilde becomes increasingly unstable.
The moving walls and the bright neon borders play an equal role in constructing the arresting visual world that surrounds these performances. It moves and shifts as if guided by the hand of God, not the hand of Justice. Lorenzo Savoini’s scenic and lighting design uses a claustrophobic cube and its neon outlines to give the prison cell a sharply contemporary edge that enhances the energy Miller’s Wilde delivers. Frank Donato’s projections heighten the tension by bringing in mocking trial crowds and sepia-toned historical images that make the public humiliation surrounding Wilde feel horribly immediate. The walls shift, the light flickers, and the space seems to press in on him as he is repeatedly forced to confront the question, “Do you adore him?”
The letter Wilde wrote out of love becomes evidence used against him, and its very beauty becomes part of the condemnation. “No one who wasn’t an artist could have written that letter,” he declares in court, and the air is thick with the devastating recognition that the gift that defines him is also being turned into a weapon. Ming Wong’s costumes help establish the shifting identities and theatrical textures of those involved in his downfall. Olivia Wheeler’s sound design beautifully supports the movement between spoken word, music, and the more heightened moments of emotional expression, keeping the production’s many elements connected to the same turbulent inner life. The words themselves seem to take on a physical force, flung outward with the same defensive urgency as the green apples Bosie hurls at Wilde, smashing them into pulp against the wall behind him.
Wilde’s celebrated epigrams arrive with their familiar precision, as if pulled from a hat at one of his fabulous cocktail parties, with Dorothy Parker standing at his side, grinning at his wit. Here, though, they carry the weight of a man whose circumstances have stripped away much of the protection that wit could provide. “Whatever I touch I make beautiful,” he declares with all the confidence and wounded pride we might expect from Oscar Wilde, even as the words are shadowed by the painful awareness of how much he has lost.
He is told, “When you’re not on your pedestal, you’re not interesting at all,” and that strikes Wilde at the very core of his identity. To be interesting, to be admired, to command a room with a perfectly delivered sentence, has been central to Wilde’s sense of himself. The suggestion that his appeal has disappeared along with his public standing is almost unbearable. The production overflows with literary and historical details that make you want to stop and investigate further, including its fascinating suggestion that Wilde may have inspired Bram Stoker’s vampire novel after his incarceration. That detail speaks to the humiliating fall of this famed man, folded into a wider meditation on the shame and prejudice that can consume generations.
De Profundis: Oscar Wilde in Jail, restaged most beautifully at Soulpepper Theatre, continues to be a remarkable achievement in queer theatre, a work that takes a deeply personal and intellectually demanding piece of writing and unleashes its full theatrical potential. The production serves the language at its centre with remarkable intelligence, allowing the letter to unfold with an emotional urgency that never feels trapped by its historical origins. Wilde wrote from a place of profound isolation, addressing the man he loved, blaming him, blaming himself, and trying to find some meaning in the wreckage of his life. That compulsion to keep writing, to keep searching for beauty and understanding when so much had been taken away, gives the work its extraordinary force. The sheer emotional life Wilde managed to place on those single pages, written one day at a time behind prison walls, is staggering. His signature, “Your Affectionate Friend,” still carries a world of hurt, tenderness, and hope.
