The Victorian writer Oscar Wilde has developed a strong following among young people.
The author of The Importance of Being Earnest and The Picture of Dorian Gray has found a new audience among today’s young generation.
An example of this is a new play, 1918: The Final Salomé by Lily Zhang, which is due to appear at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival later this year.
The play is about a 1918 wartime obscenity trial targeting Wilde’s play Salomé and features his former lover Robert “Robbie” Ross as he is forced to defend Wilde’s legacy.
According to Rowena Sears, the play’s assistant director, young people sympathise with Wilde’s unconventional life and with the injustices he endured because of his homosexuality.
Speaking to the Londoners, she said: “He attracted so much controversy and moral indignation for challenging the morality of the Victorian era.”
Watch the full discussion with Sears at Maggi Hambling’s statue of Wilde, by London’s Trafalgar Square.
More information about the play can be found here.
Watch the full discussion with Sears at Maggi Hambling’s statue of Wilde, by London’s Trafalgar Square:
Featured image credit: Wikimedia Commons
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