Durham: the location of the UK premiere of Oscar Wilde’s first play, Vera; or, The Nihilists. Image: James Stringer/Flickr
Oscar Wilde’s society comedies, such as The Importance of Being Earnest and Lady Windermere’s Fan, are among the most sparkling plays in the English language and are constantly revived. The Irish author’s first dramatic effort is less well known, and for good reason. It was a flop.
Vera; or, The Nihilists is a melodramatic tragedy about a gang of Russian revolutionaries and their plot to assassinate the despotic Czar. When the play was premiered in New York in 1883, the critics branded it “dramatic rot” and it closed within a week. Wilde would later describe the opening night as “the sharpest agony” of his life.
Oscar Wilde as he appeared in the summer of 1883, when Vera was first produced in New York. Image: oscarwildeinamerica.org
That was all anybody heard of Vera until 1956, when members of the St. Cuthbert’s Literary and Debating Society, led by John Thorburn Hall, decided to revive the play in Durham. For several months before the show, the city was plastered with “enigmatic but eye-catching posters”. Newspapers as far afield as Manchester and London took notice of the rare event—quite something for a one-off student performance.
The production was well-reviewed in the society magazine Palatinate, with Edwina Newman as Vera singled out for special praise. Wilde’s script is packed with long and repetitive speeches about liberty (“bantam gabble” said the New York critics), with few of the witty one-liners that pepper his later comedies. The Palatinate reviewer thought that “it is a tribute to [Newman] that if she ever lost her way in this maze it was not apparent.” The Czar was played by J. A. N. Robinson, Prince Paul by P. Stenson, and the Czarevich by R. S. Acton.
The only other occasions on which Vera has been staged appear to be for an off-Broadway revival in 2014 and for a second student production, this time in Vercelli, Italy, in 2021.
I am currently researching the writing and staging of Vera. If any readers can shed further light on the production at Durham, or on any of that show’s cast and crew, I invite them to get in touch. My email address can be found on my website.