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Sun 07 February 2027Doors: 7pm; Starts: 7.30pm
Tickets: £18 / £16 (Concession)
Written by Neil Titley | Starring Will Govan as Oscar Wilde | Directed by Rebecca O’Connor
Following the performance there wll be a Q&A with actor Will Govan and playwright Neil Titley.
Join us for an evening with Oscar Wilde in Neil Titley’s play “Work is The Curse of the Drinking Classes”. Performed by actor Will Govan, this wonderfully witty and sincere show will teleport audience members back to 1898 Paris, one year after Oscar Wilde’s release from prison.
In this powerful play, a broken and exiled Oscar Wilde looks back on his extraordinarily colourful life and ruminates on love, fame, family and misfortune with his infamous wit and irreverence in this hilarious but ultimately tragic story.
The play draws on Wilde’s letters, essays and anecdotes to bring this literary genius to life in a powerful 60-minute performance which will appeal as much to those who know little about the man as it will to those who admire his work. Neil Titley is one of the world’s experts on Oscar Wilde; his play balances Wilde’s almost dutiful humour with an unsentimental portrayal of his suffering in Reading Gaol, his bitter perception of man’s inhumanity to man.
Titley says “every line in the play is Oscar’s own, whether from a drama, letter, essay, or simply a witty utterance. These lines have been woven together seamlessly to make a soliloquy that leads you into Wilde’s wit, then drops you into his heartbreak”.
This play has delighted audiences in hundreds of venues across the world, including the USA, Canada, India, Hong Kong, Uruguay, Zimbabwe, Bahrain and Ethiopia and it comes to the ICC straight from its sell out run at Dublin’s MoLi – The Museum of Literature – Ireland.
The History of The Play In April 1984, Pentameters Theatre in Hampstead staged the first performance of Neil Titley’s one-man play about Oscar Wilde, Work is the Curse of the Drinking Classes, with Titley himself starring as Oscar.
More than forty years later, the show still plays to packed houses. In 2019, Neil retired from the stage and from his role as Oscar, to turn his attention to his writing and, in particular, his biography The Oscar Wilde World of Gossip. Published in 2023, the book was described by Stephen Fry as “a magnificent gift to the world”.
In 2021, an email arrived from Irish actor Will Govan, who had seen a recording of the show. He asked Neil how he would feel about him taking over the role. And so the baton was passed from one actor to another, from the older generation to the younger.
Since then, Will has taken the play around Ireland and across the UK to great acclaim. Now, he brings it to the ICC.
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Event venue
5 Black's Road, Hammersmith, London, W6 9DT Hammersmith, United Kingdom
Tickets
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