Next up in Philadelphia’s Oscar Wilde season is Mickle Street
Mickle Street is a new play about the famous meeting in 1882 between Oscar Wilde and Walt Whitman.
It is called Mickle Street because that the adress of former Whitman’s former home in Camden, New Jersey, now a house museum. As it happens, the two encounters between Wilde and Whitman took place not in Mickle Street, but at the home of Walt’s brother, George, in nearby Stevens Street, two years before Whitman purchased the Mickle Street property—the only house he ever owned.
The play runs February 17 – March 8, 2015 in the Independence Studio of the Walnut Street Theatre, America’s oldest, and it has already met with mixed reviews. But who cares about critics? I liked it.
One reason is that, as a Wilde scholar, the play visually satisfied an appetite for meeting Oscar himself. This is because Oscar Wilde, who was 6’3″ in height and 27 years old when he met Whitman, is played by Daniel Fredrick who is 6’3″ in height and 27 years old. He bears a fine embodiment. It was like being there.
Locals can gain some further insight into the play and its characters by attending Wilde Meets Whitman: Legendary Conversation at the Rosenbach Museum and Library. Michael Whistler and Allen Crawford, Whitman author, will discuss the ways in which Whitman and Wilde have influenced and inspired their own creative endeavors.
© John Cooper, 2015
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I’m with you — who cares about critics (we don’t) and I suppose that Oscar may have thought the same. But, geeeez — talk about likeness and role casting Daniel Fredrick as Oscar… brilliant.
I thought that about the likeness too. I culled the still from this video where you can see the young man speaking about the role: