Saint Oscar by Terry Eagleton

Saint Oscar by Terry Eagleton
Broadfield Pub 19*,20,21,22&24th October
Dempsey’s Club 26th*-31st October
*Previews- students £2.50/ others £4
All performances start at 7.30
Tickets £7, £5 Concessions: from the venue or on the door
Bawdy, witty and challenging, Saint Oscar, is a play by Terry Eagleton, based on Oscar Wilde’s life. It is to be performed in Sheffield for the first time, having been highly successful in Ireland during the 1980’s and subsequently televised.
Wilde self-consciously invented himself. He distanced himself from his Irish roots and active politics, but lived his homosexuality openly in repressive times. Wilde paid the price for this. His trial for gross indecency and subsequent imprisonment secured his downfall. In 1900 he died friendless and penniless in Paris.
Eagleton, a prolific writer and cultural theorist, did not write Saint Oscar as a ‘gay’ play. Students of his work will recognise many of his ideas and themes in this study of a ‘prototype post modern hero’. Relentlessly, he refuses to embrace any other causes but art and himself. He resists his mother’s pleas to use his trial to stand up for Ireland. He avoids alignment with the workers. But his court encounter with Sir Edward Carson, a fellow Irishman, ends his posturing. His final meeting with his former lover, Bosie, brings home his isolation but only after Oscar has staked his claim for sainthood.
A Ribcage Production- Enquiries- 01142508871 or 07814223457

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