“I say, remember yourself for who you are. Most of the drama concentrates on this wretched version of Wilde, a man who can only refer to himself by his prisoner number, in conversation with his younger self – a witty, elegant man, dressed in immaculate velvet, with rouged cheeks, who is urging his counterpart to strive for survival. “I can bear anything except losing my mind,” he says, as if the prospect is imminent. He’s cold, hungry, sick, dirty – and bored. Stephens plays him as a wretched, tortured soul brought to the depths of despair by his predicament. He would emerge from his sentence having written De Profundis and with the material for The Ballad of Reading Gaol, but C33 is more concerned with what Wilde had to endure, and the ultimate cost of that. This is 1895, and Wilde is in prison for gross indecency after the details of his affair with Lord Alfred Douglas, his beloved Bosie, became public knowledge. The moan is not coming from Wilde, yet, but from a disturbed man a few cells down, whose mutterings earn him an off-screen beating from a guard.
It begins with an animalistic moan, deep in the bowels of the Victorian prison, its candles and iron gates lending this a gothic chill. That hour doesn’t stretch patience or outstay its welcome.
