Talenti Theatrical Company will next week be presenting its second production for the season.

The choice fell on Oscar, a drama written and adapted in Maltese by Alfred Palma and being directed by Mario Micallef.

Many of the plays and stories by the poet, playwright, and author of fiction and nonfiction shared a dominant motif – the exposure of a secret sin, followed by humiliation and disgrace.

From his cell in Reading gaol, Oscar Wilde, sick, humiliated and broken, recounts how, after the scandal of his sexual relationship with the young Lord Alfred Douglas (Bosie), he ends up in misery, shamed, vilified and given the cold-shoulder by the London society which once had worshipped him, deprived of his most treasured possessions and abandoned by his wife Constance who, soon after the scandal, had left him and deprived him of his two sons, Vyvyan and Cyril.

All this thanks to Lord Queensbury, Bosie’s father, neurotic, furious, cruel and a drunkard who, after many tireless attempts to tarnish Wilde’s name, managed to drag him to court with serious accusations of sodomy with regard to his son. Wilde was imprisoned and served hard labour for two years.

The play proceeds with a series of dialogues in flashback between the four characters: Oscar, portrayed by Michael Mangion, his wife Constance (Lorianne D’Ugo), Bosie (Jean Pierre Cassar) and Lord Queensbury (Joe Pace), all closely linked with the author’s downfall.

Various aspects from Wilde’s life – including love, betrayal and hatred, can be seen in this play being presented by Talenti.

• Oscar is being staged at St James Cavalier, Valletta (Cert. 16+), on April 16, 17, 23 and 24 at 8pm.

Tickets may be obtained online at www.sjcav.org or by calling 2122 3200.