C33: The Queer Story of Oscar Wilde's Undoing at The Players' Ring Theatre

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."

At the height of Victorian Decadence, Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was the poster child of the cultural revolution. To him, art was life. He crafted every letter, every conversation, every waking moment into something beautiful. This skyrocketed him to the top of Victorian society, and on Valentine's Day 1895. He had it all. The fame, the fortune, the family, the boyfriend on the side, the bitter rival on the warpath, the play premiering in the West End, and the love of the public. He lost it all in 3 short months.

C33, a hauntingly beautiful new work by local playwright Alex Bickerstaff, tells the story of Oscar Wilde’s downfall through a woven tapestry of historical events and poetic representation of his time in Reading Gaol, the infamous prison where he served two years hard labor for his crime of “Gross Indecency” alongside violent criminals and death row inmates.