Whistler and Wilde

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 384, 1 November 1946, Page 11

Whistler and Wilde

NY play dealing with the ‘nineties (socalled "gay’") will have its appeal just now, since the cinema has made the mame of Oscar Wilde familiar to many theatregoers and _ radio-listeners who otherwise might never have heard it. But for all its popularising, I imagine this period will always remain a collector’s piece. The average listener may divert his attention temporarily to the pages of the Yellow Book, but its contributors will seem too remotely precious to engage the modern radio audience for long. John Gundry’s play "Mr. Whistler Meets Mr. Wilde" was bound to succeed with such a subject so well managed, for the notorious Whistler-Wilde feud was the occasion of such an outpouring of vitriolic cynicism on both sides that no account of it can fail to coryscate with that form of scintillating and poisoned wit in which the two protagonists delighted. Of the radio players, the Wilde sounded more convincing than the Whistler; Whistler was a native of the U.S.A., but in this play he was at times allowed to lapse into almost pure New-Zealandese. It is rather a startling fact that Oscar Wilde, had he lived, would now be a contemporary of Bernard Shaw. It is a proof of the innate preciosity of the ‘nineties period that it has already, in the short space of half a century, become a "dated" period, as glamorous and unreal as the popular idea of the Age of Elizabeth.