Fridae

For over a hundred years, Oscar Wilde has been celebrated as a gay icon. The 19th century Irish-British writer became the first public face of homosexuality in modern times when he was tried for acts of "gross indecency" with men and sentenced to two years' hard labour in prison.

So it's easy for us to forget that there are, in fact, two Wildes - not just the gay Wilde, but the straight Wilde. Despite his queer reputation, his plays and fairy tales have remained unfailingly popular among mainstream audiences, especially in Britain.

Over the next two months, these two views of Wilde will be battling it out in Singapore, as two theatre companies stage very different versions of the author's most famous - and by most accounts best - comedy, The Importance of Being Earnest.

(For those of you who've never heard of the piece, it's a light, witty story of mixed-up identities, with two young men, Jack and Algernon, chasing after two young women, Gwendolen and Cecily who mistakenly believe their names are "Ernest." It's a classic, and surprisingly still very funny.)

This week, from Thursday 19 to Sunday 22 February, Buds Theatre Company will be staging the play under British director/actress Claire Devine. It'll be a completely traditional interpretation, featuring an all-professional cast of mostly British actors at Victoria Theatre.

"I've always wanted to do the play," Devine tells me. "I think it's timeless. I love the language." She lets me in on her memories of reading Earnest aloud at the age of four (yes, she was that smart) while helping her mother learn lines for an amateur production. Later, at the age of eight, she watched her grandfather and grandmother acting in the show - one of the very first theatre productions she witnessed.

She jokes that she'd originally envisioned an all-white cast, bringing all the professional Caucasian actors in Singapore she's worked with together on stage at the same time. However, during read-throughs she realised that fitting the rhythms of the piece were more important than using genuine accents. Thus, in the usual Singapore fashion, the actors are a mix of ethnicities, including Huzir Sulaiman, Andy Tear, Jenni Stacey, Julie Wee and, in the director's justifiably admiring words, "the great Michael Corbidge".

Next month, however, Wild Rice will be taking its turn with Earnest, under the direction of local director/actor Glen Goei, from Wednesday 25 March to Saturday 11 April at the Drama Centre. What sets this production apart is that all the parts - male and female - will be played by men. And it won't be a drag show, either: the men will be acting as men, with the straight relationships turned to queer ones.

Goei's reasons for staging the play now are stridently political. "377A still exists in Singapore! And I think that people should be reminded that the most popular play in the English language was written by a gay man who was imprisoned under 377A in England."

"Oscar Wilde was the first man to have the courage to come out in Victorian England and be true to himself, even though he knew the consequences of it," he says. "And of course the play is all about the importance of being earnest (i.e. true to oneself)."

It might seem odd that gay activists should try to claim a play like Earnest as a queer text - after all, it's all about heterosexual romances, without a whiff of criminal gay sex. However, there's some justification: critics have suggested inside jokes, such as the possibility of "earnest" being a code for "uranist," an early term for homosexual.

The play was also written while Wilde was having his great affair with the handsome young nobleman Lord Alfred Douglas (nicknamed Bosie), and some details of this seem to have leaked into the play - Bosie's mother, who lived in a town called Bracknell, may have been the basis for Lady Bracknell, the terrifying mother of young Gwendolen.

There's also an important historical connection between the play and the indecency trials that Wilde suffered. When Earnest opened to great acclaim in 1895, Bosie's father, the Marquis of Queensberry, attempted to barge into the theatre to throw vegetables at his son's lover. Two weeks later, he sent a badly spelt card to Wilde accusing him of being a "Somdomite", driving Wilde to sue him for libel - a bad move, as the courts soon turned to prosecute Wilde instead.

Earnest was still playing to packed houses while its playwright was being tried. After 83 performances, it closed, due to the growing scandal. Wilde never wrote another play.

Goei explains that he's using an all-male cast because he sees all the characters as projections of Wilde's own voice. His cast will include Daniel York, Brendon Fernandez, Hossan Leong, Chua Enlai and the Tang Quartet - as well as Wild Rice Artistic Director Ivan Heng as Lady Bracknell. "M Butterfly directs M Butterfly," jokes Goei, referring to the fact that both he and Ivan played the title role in David Henry Hwang's famous play.

Meanwhile, Devine says she's also cast a Lady Bracknell who'll pull her weight: Susan Tordoff, whom she calls "the finest actor on this island on the moment."

"She's the most perfect Lady Bracknell," she says. "It's scary. She does get a little carried off playing her lord and mighty. She does need a slap now and then. I'm going to say Ivan's going to have nothing on her. She'll eat him alive."

After a lot of laughing, Ivan Heng protests in response: "It's not a competition lah! Of course, what I do know is that Sue will not be playing Lady Bracknell as a man, and so she is most welcome to eat me alive."

Fridae recommends both these productions, because both casts and directors are top-notch, and we're generally supportive of all varieties of drama. Devine may be taking a fairly straight approach to Wilde this time, but she's also recently directed the very queer Death and Dancing with Buds Theatre Company. And on his part, Goei reminds me, "Just to put the record straight - this is not a "gay" production - there are more straight men in the cast than gay!"

After all, just because we've put a gay spin on Wilde doesn't mean we should begrudge other people their more innocent, less sexual view of his writings. The two images of the great man aren't incompatible - and perhaps, two Wildes are better than one.

Buds Theatre Company is staging "The Importance of Being Earnest" from 19 to 22 February at Victoria Theatre. Shows at 8pm with 3pm matinee on Saturday. Tickets are available from centre-stage.com.

Wild Rice is staging "The Importance of Being Earnest" from 25 March to 11 April 2009 at the Drama Centre. Shows at 8pm with 3pm matinees on weekends. Tickets are available from sistic.com.sg.