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Alfie Byrne, the main character in A Man of No Importance, trancsends his personal and artistic despair throug his love of, and indentification with, Oscar Wilde. We've all felt this, a secret kinship with a writer whose books have sustained us through periods of great loneliness or artistic struggle.
In this issue of the Lincoln Center Theaer Review, we turned to four of our favorite writers--the best-selling novelist Ann Packer, the playwright Richar Greenberg, the acclaimed novelist and short-story writer Mark Slouka, and the journalist and nonfiction author Rich Cohen--and asked them: Who is your secret hero? In what circumstances did your kinship with him or her emerge?
Also in this issue of the Lincoln Center Theater Review, John Guare talks to lyricist Lynn Ahrens and composer Stephen Flaherty about the collaborative effort that transformed A Man of No Importance, which was originally written as a film, into a musical, and about the process of finding, and listening to, a musical's voice. Colm Toibin and Grank McGuiness reflect on their childhoods in Ireland, and the religious fervor of Dublin in the '60s, against which their youthful desires unfolded. The novelist Mary Gordon provides a provocative reflection on the biblical heroine Salome, whose acts of rebellion inspired Wilde's play, a production of which forms the centerpiece of A Man of No Importance. And we've provided an excerpt from the play itself, from its final, searing moments, in which Salmoé publicly declares her forbidden passions. We close with a passage from the brilliant iconoclast Quentin Crip's memoir The Naked Girl Servant--a witty and painful reflection on otherness, on the disfiguring forces of hypocrisy and repression, and the enobling power of truth and love.
-- The Editors
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