‘Wilde’ Adds Modern Slant to Playwright’s Classic Wit

Despite a prosaic title, “Wilde . . . and Wonderful,” a one-man one-act about the life of Oscar Wilde at the Zephyr Theatre, gives a welcome new slant to the standard biographical data about that protean, doomed genius.

As far as Wildean anecdotes go, playwright Maurice Keller nicely balances the famous and the obscure, fusing his own original material with Wilde’s so ingeniously that the seams only occasionally show. Keller’s Wilde speaks to us from the great beyond, a somewhat tired conceit, but one that allows Wilde to muse with modern candor on his life, his art and his sexuality.

The play has been solidly directed by Paul Linke, perhaps best known for his own solo effort “Time Flies When You’re Alive.” Linke’s past mastery of the one-man show is evident in his austerely simple yet elegant staging.

Actor Peter Van Norden fully fleshes his fascinating character, zinging in Wilde’s most familiar epigrams with a lethal comic timing that makes them freshly hilarious, yet also bringing an emotional resonance to the humiliating final chapters of Wilde’s life that leaves us with a new appreciation for his towering, tormented subject.

* “Wilde . . . and Wonderful,” Zephyr Theatre, 7456 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles. Sundays, 12:30 p.m.; Mondays, 8 p.m. Ends Dec. 3. $12. (213) 660-8587. Running time: 1 hour, 20 minutes.