This presentation of Oscar Wilde’s De Profundis, in a translation by Mirko Bonné, is reimagined and dramatised by the Berliner Ensemble.
Director Oliver Reese uses a triangular box structure as both Wilde’s physical cell and the prison of his mind. De Profundis is the long letter the disgraced playwright and wit wrote to his estranged young lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, from prison.
I have seen it performed once before, in 2008 by an ailing Corin Redgrave who captured its humanity and poetry; I also watched Prisoner C33 in which Toby Stephens was tough and uncompromising as the sequestered Wilde.
Here, the actor is Jens Harzer, who inhabits the desperate side of Wilde, the one who loved too deeply and lived too much for pleasure. In Reese’s vision of the piece, Harzer offers a deeply physical and often unsettling depiction of a man trapped in body and soul.
In a 1hr 50 min runtime, performed in German with English surtitles, the space changes thanks to lighting (Steffen Heinke) and music (Jörg Gollasch). Shadows offer a sense of being overlooked and influenced.
Wilde first appears with just his head in the spotlight for the first section of De Profundis. We hear of Douglas’s selfishness and demanding nature, and Wilde’s doting behaviour. Later, an orange light floods the space as the text turns to discussion of Douglas and his hatred of his father.
Harzer’s Wilde has no sense of the man of society and fashion. He demolishes an apple, with pieces flying out of the frame onto the wider stage. He gnaws at what looks like a bird’s corpse and eventually at his own flesh.
His self-harm and physical diminishment – often crouching or arranging his body to look as small as possible – point to an increasingly agitated mental state. He clearly blames Douglas for his plight, and yet kisses his photograph before placing it, in fragments, in his pocket.
Harzer had never performed a monologue before taking on this role. And in Reese’s vision, it becomes much more than a letter exploring what is left when a person’s life, work, family, reputation and worth have gone.
Achingly beautiful as well as briskly shocking, De Profundis stands as one of the great artistic and philosophical works of the Victorian age. When Wilde was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment for his homosexuality and unrepentant exploration of personal freedom, he thought that society would shun him forever and his works would be forgotten.
He was right in part – as ‘Sebastian Melmoth’ (a name taken from St Sebastian and Melmoth the Wanderer), he remained in exile for the last four years of his life. His family changed their name to Holland, and he never saw his children again.
But the plays, the novel, and the poems endured, with regular revivals and adaptations. 126 years after his death, Wilde is revered, lauded, and celebrated. Inevitably, Douglas is remembered alongside him.
The Berliner Ensemble De Profundis has some notable moments, including the ‘each man kills the thing he loves’ section from the poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol being included – in English.
There is a definite melancholy that exists through the whole piece, underscored with anger and a deep regret. Reece captures this in his direction, which requires Harzer to deface the walls, tip water and dye over himself, and mutilate his own body.
When Harzer finally leaves his box and sits on the edge to finish the monologue, his depiction of Wilde’s state has left us shaken. We know what happens next. Perhaps he does too.
5 stars.
Berliner Ensemble’s De Profundis is at Coronet Theatre until 7 Oct.
For more on Berliner Ensemble, visit their website.
Photo credit: Jörg Brüggemann