Queer Voices

Neil Bartlett

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781849431668
• eBook ISBN: 9781849435536
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

Although his mainstream career has recently included majorwork for the RSC and the National, the five new pieces collected here show just how close playwright and director Neil Bartlett has stayed to the radical queer cultural roots that first brought him to prominence in the early 1980s. Commissioned to be performed in spaces as various as South London's notorious Vauxhall Tavern, Brighton's Theatre Royal and the pulpit of Westminster Abbey, these hit-and-run dramatic monologues bring all of his trademark wit and passion to bear on the issues that run throughout his work – the power of love, and the necessity for anger. Together, they make up a trenchantly personal take on what it feels like to have spent nearly thirty years standing up and speaking one's mind.

The collection also includes his 2011 adaptation of Oscar Wilde's The Remarkable Rocket, which uses the diamond-sharp text of one of Wilde's children's stories as the springboard for a haunting meditation on the enduring power of Wilde to inspire, dazzle and move. A follow on from his earlier collection Solo Voices, this new collection is vivid, fierce and tender, with five provocative and highly actable new works from one of British theatre's most idiosyncratic voices.

www.neil-bartlett.com

Oscar Wilde’s
‘The Remarkable Rocket’
(For Alfonso)

When Andrew Comben, Director of the Brighton Festival, asked me to make a new piece for the 2011 Festival, I immediately thought of two things. One was how much I love the atmospheric, story-soaked stage of my local theatre, Brighton’s Theatre Royal; the other was a story about one of the town’s most famous – and infamous – visitors.

According to evidence given at his trial, on the night of September 27th 1894 Oscar Wilde, half way through the family holiday in nearby Worthing during which he wrote part of The Importance of Being Earnest, took a young newspaper-seller called Alfonso Conway, who he’d picked up on the beach, out on the town in Brighton for a treat. The records indicate that they spent the night at the Albion Hotel. I’d always assumed that this meant the Royal Albion Hotel down by the Palace Pier – after all, it was the poshest joint in town, and Wilde was at the very height of his fame and extravagant lifestyle that summer. But no; checking out the details of the story, it turns out that their Albion Hotel was one of a row of distinctly ordinary establishments on the Queen’s Road, about two hundred yards down the hill from Brighton station on the right hand side (it’s now number 35, if you’re in Brighton, and want to go and have a look). Delighted by this discovery, I wondered how the evening worked…did the manager specialise in turning a blind eye to gentlemen of Mr Wilde’s persuasion, perhaps? Then I began to wonder about what actually happened in that hotel room…

As you’ll see, I ended up writing not a play, but an invitation to speculate. The speculation takes the form of a multi-voiced, multilayered dramatic reading of something that Wilde himself had written six years before he spent the night with Alfonso. It’s one of the collection of strange little childrens’ stories he wrote (or said he wrote, anyway) for his son Cyril, called The Remarkable Rocket. It’s full of laughter and charm, but has some characteristically sharp edges – and dark undercurrents. I’m not at all sure that what Oscar really wanted from young men like Alfonso was sex; I think what he wanted was a different, more intimate audience – a life-saving escape from the niceties of polite London society. So what if, I wondered, after they’d done the business, Mr Wilde – at the very height of his rocket-like rise to fame, but surely already with some sense that all fireworks must eventually go out – told this rather different kind of boy a rather different kind of bedtime story. Read with hindsight, this particular story seems full of remarkable echoes of the summer in which it was written – and of remarkable pre-figurings of what was about to happen to its author.

The piece was created for a Festival, and the intention was that it should be a sort of intimate, celebratory, laughing and definitely one-off recital, with scripts being referred to where appropriate, rather than a ‘play’. The four performers were in their own simple, glamorous clothes, and made no apology for being themselves where appropriate, or indeed for reading from their scripts (the first performance was rehearsed in a single day(. It is, after all, a bed-time story…in several senses of the word. The original performance was given late at night.

A note to actors and directors; although the local references made the first performance of this piece entirely ‘site specific’, with one minor amendment to the line about the Albion hotel being just a couple of streets away from the theatre, I trust it could be performed anywhere.

This piece was first performed by a remarkable line-up of actors; Bette Bourne, Guy Henry, Maggie Steed and Edmund Wiseman. I am proud to dedicate the text to them.

And to Alfonso.

All of the different voices – in both stories – as well as the shifts from the performer’s own voice to a character voice – should be distinctly coloured.

The four performers are;

‘A’, a handsome, well-built young man who represents and voices Alfonso;

‘B’, Wilde, and Wilde’s alter-ego in the story, The Rocket;

‘C’, a woman, who sometimes reflects Constance Wilde’s side of things;

and ‘D’, a man whose voice is sometimes documentary and , sometimes (when he is voicing the more judgemental characters in the story) judgemental – and sometimes deeply sympathetic.

The original staging of the piece was very simple. The curtain rose silently on a beautifully lit but bare stage; at the front of the stage were four gilt chairs, each with a music stand. At the rear of the stage were four identical chairs, with C, B, A and D sitting in them, looking at the audience. All of the actors had scripts with them, except A (Alfonso).

Oscar Wilde’s
‘The Remarkable Rocket’
(For Alfonso)

A silence.

A walks downstage, and eyes up the audience. He is dressed in a suit, but shirtless and barefoot.

A It’s a true story

On the night of September 27^th, 1894, at about…oh –

He looks at his watch, and uses the actual time on the evening of the performance(this line can be changed as required).

At about 9.45 on a Saturday evening…

A boy called Alfonso –

D stands abruptly; A speaks if he was being interrogated;

Sorry Officer – full name? Alfonso Harold Conway, Number Five, Bath Place, Worthing –

Like I said, this is a true story…;

At 9.45 on the 27^th September, 1894, a boy called Alfonso Conway found himself – not entirely unexpectedly – in a bedroom on the first floor of the Albion Hotel, which was at Number 35, Queens Road, Brighton; a shabby little establishment just down the road from the station, about five hundred yards…

He points upstage left.

that way. It’s flats now, just above the ‘Mr Noodles’ Chinese takeaway… Now; Alfonso was wearing –

D (Arriving at his chair.) According to the evidence he later gave to Mr Charles Russell, a Private Detective in the employ of the Marquess of Queensbury – as he said, this is a true story…

A Like I said, Alfonso was wearing a blue serge suit, a straw boater with a red and blue ribbon –

D And carrying a crook-handled silver-mounted walking stick.

A as if admiring himself in a mirror Nice. At about… (He checks his watch again.) 9.47, he took off the hat…took off his blue serge jacket –

As he says this, A – completely straightforwardly – takes off his clothes; he spends the rest of the evening in his underwear. D tries (unsuccessfully) not to look.

D (in the breast pocket of which was a silver cigarette case, engraved ‘For Alfonso, from his friend’)

A (With the cigarette case – to D.)D’you want one?

D No thank you.

A– suit yourself mate…took off his blue serge jacket – took off his blue serge trousers,

D – laid down the silver-topped cane,

A and got into bed. (He sits in his chair.)With Oscar Wilde.

D (Also sits.) Who, earlier in the day, had bought him the suit, the hat, the cane, the cigarette case – and asked him if he fancied a trip to Brighton for the evening. –

A Don’t mind if I do, Mr Wilde.

D The cigarette case had presumably clinched the deal. Alfonso sold newspapers from a kiosk on Worthing Pier – when this came up in evidence at Mr Wilde’s trial, he famously commented that he had had no idea that the boy was connected with literature in any form whatsoever – but they’d actually met on the beach –

C (Standing and moving downstage to her chair.) On the beach, with Wilde’s wife, Constance – and the elder of their t...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Halftitle
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Helpless (2007)
• Sleeping Beauty (2010)
• Oscar Wilde’s The Remarkable Rocket (for Alfonso) (2011)
• The Book of Numbers (2011)
• What Can You Do? (2012)