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Edinburgh Reporter
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Edinburgh Reporter
Bold, beautiful and scandalous – Lillie Langtry is back in Edinburgh
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. Scandals and the squandering of huge sums of money saw her fortunes fading as the dawn of the 20th century beckoned. Like this: Like Related
The Herald Scotland
29-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
We should celebrate Oscar Wilde as a mould-breaking feminist
One a playwright adored by society and then destroyed by its hypocritical condemnation of his homosexuality; the other the first socialite to appear on stage, who captivated and scandalised in equal measure (this included her affair with the Prince of Wales – complete with sojourns in a Scottish love nest). They were powerhouses for change. Wilde gave us the self-actualised female protagonist who apologises to no one. What's more he approached the female characters in his plays from all different angles. Some are martyrs (The Duchess of Padua), some are righteous warriors (Vera); some are ridiculous (Lady Bracknell), some are conniving (Mrs Cheverly) or vindictive (Salomé); some are philosophical (Mrs Allonby), some are frivolously shallow (Mabel Chiltern); many buck conventional domesticity and reliance on a husband; all are fiercely independent thinkers, like his own mother, Lady Jane Wilde, a poetess 'who was considered to be the most ardent and hot-headed of Irish Nationalists'. It's difficult to overstate how important this was for modern theatre and literature. Soon other playwrights followed suit by portraying women as individual beings untethered to husband or family. George Bernard Shaw wrote Mrs. Warren's Profession soon after seeing the opening performance of Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan, and the similarities in social politics and the nonconformist mother roles are undeniable. August Strindberg and Anton Chekhov subsequently adopted the style of creating more psychologically complex female characters at the turn of the 20th century. The direction of Western theatre and literature irrevocably shifted. Wilde gave audiences a multitude of memorable characters and quotes such as Mrs Cheverly's quip in An Ideal Husband: 'The strength of women comes from the fact that psychology cannot explain us. Men can be analysed; women… merely adored.' Contrasts between the sexes are a common theme in his social comedies: In A Woman of No Importance, Mrs Allonby ironically argues against the conjecture that wives' frivolity were what made marriages unhappy: 'How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she was a perfectly rational being?... We have always been picturesque protests against the mere existence of common sense. We saw its dangers from the first.' Something else I realised in the nine years I've spent researching Wilde was that his impact on the role of women wasn't restricted to fictional worlds. His relationship with Langtry was crucial to her rise to stardom, and she in turn influenced his poetry and playwriting. He dedicated poems to her and based the character of Mrs Erlynne in Lady Windermere's Fan on Langtry's life experience. And Langtry's life and personality were every bit as outsized as Wilde's characters. Both deserve wider recognition. This is something I hope to contribute to at the Edinburgh Fringe with my one-woman play Wilde Women which celebrates how they strengthened women's voices on the stage using humour, grit and grace. Krista Scott is the writer and performer of Wilde Women, which she is presenting at the 2025 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. She is a well-known actor, director and dialect coach and Professor of Theatre at Texas Christian University in the USA.
