Chris Baldock has played Oscar Wilde three times. The first time was in Moisés Kaufman's play Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde in 2007 and then he played Wilde twice more,  in 2010 and 2014, in David Hare's The Judas Kiss. He thinks Hare's play contains the richer portrayal of the character and his story. 

Baldock - a producer and director as well as an actor -  is relaunching his Mockingbird Theatre Company, previously in Melbourne, with a Canberra production of The Judas Kiss. 

"What we do is plays from the 21st and 20th centuries that deserve to be seen- it's all about the play," he says.
"There are a lot of plays Canberra hasn't seen that deserve to be seen."

The Judas Kiss, he says, is one of them, and in it Baldock will once again play Oscar Wilde, the tragic Irish playwright, novelist, poet and wit. But he shows no signs of treating it as a mere retread - quite the contrary.

"Each time it's really different," he says.  Having a different cast each time makes for variations in approach and emphasis and nuance and so does having a new director for each production: Baldock doesn't direct himself in the part.

"This time particularly, Karina is dragging new things out of me," he says.

"This one could be my favourite."

"Karina" is Karina Hudson, an actor of 15 years' experience who completed Mockingbird's six-month directing course and is directing a full-length play for the first time.

The Judas Kiss is about the events towards the end of Wilde's life when he went from being the toast of London with plays such as The Importance of Being Earnest to a disgraced and destitute exile.  In 1895, he brought an ill-advised libel suit with the encouragement of his young lover Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas (played by Liam Jackson) after Bosie's hated father, the Marquess of Queensbury,  presented a visiting card at Wilde's club saying Wilde was a "somdomite" (sic).

Wilde lost the case and, although he could have fled the country,  remained in London and was prosecuted for "gross indecency" - sexual activity between men short of sodomy - and sentenced to two years' imprisonment with hard labour. In 1897, in Italy, the broken and virtually penniless Wilde was temporarily reunited with Bosie. But can their relationship last in such reduced circumstances?

Baldock says he loves Wilde's duplicity - "he thinks he hates sentiment but is a sentimental man", his ability to create himself, and his wit and cleverness - which did him no good during his testimony in the libel suit where his flippant and evasive answers during cross-examination  contributed to his downfall.

"He didn't set out to be a martyr," Baldock says.

For Baldock, the play is largely about "the blindness of love" -Wilde so adores Bosie: he will do anything for him and doesn't see the selfishness of the young man.

"Ultimately, Oscar's responsible for his own fall," Baldock says.

A more loyal and devoted companion is the third main character, also depicting a real person, Robert "Robbie" Ross (Patrick Galen-Mules), the Canadian journalist and critic who was Wilde's former lover. He remained Wilde's best friend and was his literary executor after his death.

Hudson says with Baldock in his third production of The Judas Kiss, "We had had moments where I'll give him some direction and he'll say, 'That's not how we did it before'" but it hasn't been a problem.

"He'a an amazing actor, open to investigating new ideas," she says.

"He said to me he was really excited by the work I was doing with the production and that it was a very different production to the other two and a very different Oscar for him."

She says that for her, "It's important that while Bosie is perceived as a villain, all three of the characters are acting as the people they are, with their own drives. They're motivated by the same thing: love for each other and Oscar's love of them."

We've all had the devil and the angel on our shoulder when faced with a decision at some point, she says, or been that angel, or devil, for others. And we've all felt the need to be true to ourselves. In this play, the characters are faced with decisions and perform actions and it's up to the audience to consider their motivations and how pure - or impure - they may be.

The aristocratic young Bosie, she says,  is rebelling against his disapproving father and "has passion for anything in the moment - he loves to hurl himself into every moment at the time".

Robbie, however, "is very grounded, with a generous heart. He comes from a family who accepted him for what he was and still loved him and supported him. He has a very loving relationship with Oscar and is very centred."

And Wilde, she says, does what he wants at every point in the action even when it's against his own interests. "Love does funny things."