I was fortunate to attend to the opening night of De Profundis by Oscar Wilde, presented by fortyfive downstairs in association with Dino Dimitriadis and Paul Capsis.  Fortyfive downstairs is a beautifully, stark and intimate space, perfect for this performance. The full manuscript of De Profundis involves a three hour reading. For the fortyfive downstairs show, the work has been seamlessly re-crafted and curated for a captivating 85 minute performance. The show includes two well placed segments Capsis’s beautiful singing voice. 

To regret one’s own experiences is to arrest one’s own development. To deny one’s own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one’s own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul.

De Profundis was written by Oscar Wilde to his lover, Lord Alfred ‘Bosie’ Douglas during Wilde’s imprisonment in Reading Goal in 1897. It was not published in full until 1949. The work is far more than a bitter, beautiful and measured love letter. It is a 50,000 word critique of the political system and society Wilde inhabited, and the validity of its laws. He used personification to grapple with themes including love, hate, vanity, humility and sorrow and turns his suffering into an art form.

I blame myself for allowing an unintellectual friendship, a friendship whose primary aim was not the creation and contemplation of beautiful things, to entirely dominate my life.

Wilde had been imprisoned for ‘gross indecency’ in 1895 after a lawsuit by his lover’s father, the Marquis of Queensberry. He was at the height of his fame at the time, but the experience of incarceration and hard labour broke him. Wilde wrote De Profundis in him final months of incarceration. He was released in 1897 and wrote a poem called The Ballad of Reading Gaol, but completed little other creative work. Instead he spent his time writing letters expressing his concerns about the state of British prisons and advocating for reforms. He died in France in 1900 from meningitis. In 2017, Wilde was among thousands of gay and bisexual men pardoned posthumously for engaging in consensual same-sex relationships.

The real fool, such as the gods mock or mar, is he who does not know himself. 

Cellist, Conrad Hamill accompanies Paul Capsis in this seductive performance of De Profundis, holding the audience captivated for its duration with the elegance of Wilde’s prose. The set was minimal – a writing desk, a glass of water and reading glasses. The warm, rich, and resonant melody of the cello provided a backdrop that evoked the emotions of Wilde’s experience.

We have forgotten that water can cleanse, and fire purify, and that the Earth is mother to us all. 

De Profundis runs from 30 April to 4 May at fortyfive downstairs in Flinders Lane. If you enjoy a beautiful and powerful monologue, this is a performance not to be missed.