Echo de Paris

"Echo de Paris" by Laurence Housman is a play that stages a spirited conversation among a group of Englishmen, starring Oscar Wilde, in a Parisian café. It's a snapshot of a moment where ideas about art, failure, and how society sees things get tossed around like coffee shop chatter. The men await Wilde, and when he arrives, the talk becomes richer, touching on what it really means to succeed or fail as an artist, the strangeness of what society expects, and personal stories that show Wilde's complex nature. The dialogue is sharp and smart, filled with philosophical thoughts, especially from Wilde, about how true art often learns more from failure than from doing well. It captures the ups and downs, the cleverness and sad turns, of artists, all seen through Wilde's own life story.