This is Oscar Wilde’s only serious play, and his only failure. Vera was written when he was in his 20s as a response to political violence – and to some extent a call to it. The work, centring on a revolutionary plot to kill the Czar, was as contemporary as it gets: two years before its first performance the Czar had been assassinated by revolutionaries in real life. Wilde could not get his play put on in London where killing royals was not the order of the day.
It was staged in New York where the play was markedly unsuccessful, to such an extent that it was taken off within a week and Wilde did not mention it when referring to his work in the future. The director had played up the comedy at the expense of the drama, making it risible for some in the audience.
This adaptation conflates Wilde’s four act play into 85 minutes to good tragic effect. The plot centres around the transgressive love between an innkeeper’s daughter, Vera, and Alexis the son of the Tsar who has a passion for social justice and is mixing incognito with the revolutionaries.
The Nihilists of the title are a revolutionary sect dedicated to overthrowing the oppressive order by violence – particularly assassination, with such lines as ‘the curing of Russia is a surgeon’s business and done by the knife.’ With his father the target, Alexis presents the revolutionary dilemma: calling for a better world while committing cruel deeds in the current one. When the plot succeeds and Alexis becomes the Czar, he also becomes the target while realising how difficult it is to fashion a democracy with a cabinet of cynical and self-interested ministers.
This is dramatic red meat and there are some fine scenes, starting with the prologue where Vera first encounters oppression in the figures of hooded figures who have been tortured, being taken off to Siberia. One of them is her brother for whom she swears vengeance.
The standout performance is from Jonathan Hansler as the Czar who is elderly and doddering, paranoid and self-deluding, both all-powerful and pitiful. When Donald Trump’s biopic is cast, Hansler should be a contender for the lead.
Kat Kim as prime minister gets many of the best lines in the epigrammatic speech which Wilde later made famous in his comedies. Her performance is subtle, but shrewd and mean.
Though this is not a play good enough to be revived without Wilde’s name, by the low standards of Victorian theatre before the 1890s, it isn’t a bad play. It is not, however, a good or well-wrought play. The problems with it are apparent in this adaptation even though it removes the most prolix speeches and retains the moments of dramatic action. The ending was a problem in the original and it continues to be. Does Vera succeed in killing the man she loves for the sake of an ideal? Can the Czar convince her to join him in democratising Russia? Do we really believe in their relationship?
The ending offered here is different from that as performed in 1883 but no more successful dramatically. It may be that the situation is irresolvable. In recognition of the play’s difficulties, director and adaptor Cecilia Thoden van Velzen adds a coda which is a voiceover giving the performance history of the play with an elevation of Oscar Wilde for his courage in seeing it through. She deserves thanks for bringing this production to the London stage so we can see the complex issues he grappled with, and a rare chance to see an important piece of theatre history.
Playwright: Oscar Wilde
Director: Cecilia Thoden van Velzen
Cast: Natasha Culzak, George Airey, Kat Kim, Jonathan Hansler, Jo Idris-Roberts, Finn Samuels, Catherine Allison
Duration: 85 minutes no interval
Until: 27 September 2025