Stephen and Mr. Wilde

Ian C. Nelson is assistant director of libraries at the University of
Saskatchewan and président, La Troupe du Jour, Regina Summer Stage.

In this most carefully written and nicely balanced play, the celebrated
and witty Oscar Wilde is pitted against a black valet with a dubious
past. Set in Toronto during his North American lecture tour in 1882, the
play does not focus on Wilde’s own dubious future, although its
initial scandal centres on his wit, aestheticism (as social commentary),
and eccentricity. The main plot revolves around an evening that includes
feeding the press, visiting a bawdy house (the prostitute is female),
and making discoveries about the elusive Stephen, Wilde’s valet.
Stephen is “a shadowy figure [of whom] history tells us nothing [ ...
] beyond his name and his brief employment with Wilde.” But Bartley
fully succeeds in redressing the balance between these two figures. His
elegant, witty, and Wildesque writing extends even to the playwright’s
note and to the subtitles given to each scene.

The key to the strength of this play lies in Bartley’s respect for
historical resonance. He transplants into the plot the essential
attitude of Wilde 13 prophetic years later: “with the evidence spread
all over the papers [ ... ] he seems to think the force of his charm or
his wit or his art can change all that.” Wilde himself comments in the
final scene, “I may not always be lucky ... I seem to take risks.”

This is a surprising and refreshing play for, as Mark Jones in Theatrum
has noted, one seldom gets to read a play about a gay man where the
focus is other than just his homosexuality.