Lillie Langtree Returns to Edinburgh This Month

Brilliant actress, phenomenal beauty, mistress of the Prince of Wales – Lillie Langtry was an international Victorian superstar celebrity.

Indeed, her stardom in America began when she was spotted onstage in Edinburgh and snapped up to go to the States – and when she arrived in New York the traffic stopped and the stock exchange closed. A town in Texas was even named in her honour. And now she’s back in Scotland’s capital and you have the chance of an audience with Mrs Langtry at this year’s Fringe in Wilde Women.

In the past she trod the boards at The Lyceum – programmes still exist from the 1880s – but today she is appearing at Greenside’s Fern Studio on George Street.

Krista Scott’s one-woman play takes us back to 1900 when Langtry’s career is in decline and when he close friend Oscar Wilde is condemned to social disgrace after he was convicted of “indecency” offences related to his affair with Lord Alfred “Bosie” Douglas.

But Lillie has a plan – she wants to revive both their reputations and careers by writing a new play in which she reprises all of Wilde’s most illustrious female characters – Cecily, Salomé, Mrs Cheveley, Mrs. Erlynne from Lady Windermere’s Fan and naturally, Lady Bracknell.

She is nervously awaiting a telegram giving his approval.

Wilde Women sees Langtree explain, in fascinating detail, the background to the characters and to her’s and Wilde’s lives – and delivering a multitude of classic lines.

Full of wit and insight into two of the most influential figures in the arts world of their day, the solo play emphasises the transformative impact of Wilde’s writing on the presentation of women in theatre and literature.

Scott says: “Oscar Wilde had a profound effect on the representation of women onstage in the modern age. 

“He launched the trend to feature strong, independent women as protagonists in dramas and in comedies, a trend picked up by George Bernard Shaw, Henrik Ibsen, August Strindberg and others.

“Without Lady Windermere's Fan, a play he wrote for Lillie Langtry, G.B. Shaw would've never written Mrs. Warren's Profession, which in turn examined the propagation of prostitution.

“Much of the development of psychologically complex women's roles in today's theatre can be traced back to Wilde's work.

“I also hope the audiences will come to appreciate the dazzling wit and beguiling irony embedded in his rhetoric and want to find out more about Oscar Wilde after seeing the play.”

Scott started researching Wilde and the roles he created for women nine years ago – as she discovered more about his life she grew increasingly interested in his relationship with Langtry.

Both were regarded as highly unconventional figures, sometimes feted by fashionable society and at other times damned.

Langtry was the mistress of the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII, sometimes sharing a “love nest” in Scotland. 

She became the first socialite to appear on the professional stage, starring in She Stoops to Conquer in 1881. 

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