Before that moment, Wilde is all attitude. Afterward, he's just a man.

And when that moment comes, in the Orlando-UCF Shakespeare Festival's telling, it's greeted by a silence so prolonged, so profound that something in the room seems to have died.

The power of that silence is only one example of the sorts of power on display in Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, the bravura production onstage at the Orange County Historical Museum. Playwright Moises Kaufman has built an intricate and elegant construction of the documents of Wilde's life -- the letters, the epigrams, the essays and the transcripts of his notorious trials. And the Shakespeare festival has brought to its telling the kind of raw intimacy that is becoming the festival's own special brand.

The centerpiece of the Central Florida Theatre Alliance's "Go Wilde" season, Gross Indecency comes to Orlando after several years of what has sometimes seemed a glut of Wildeana -- stage and film revivals of his comedy An Ideal Husband, productions in New York and elsewhere of this play and David Hare's drama The Judas Kiss, and a film biography called simply Wilde.

But more than any of those other works, Gross Indecency makes it clear what Wilde's story has to say to those who live 100 years after him -- that his concerns about art, justice and personal freedom are exactly the same concerns modern thinkers have today.

Wilde was riding high in 1895 when the events began to unfold that led to his trials, imprisonment and eventual death in 1900, at the age of 46. The Importance of Being Earnest and An Ideal Husband both were playing in London's West End, and the writer was living life extravagantly and publicly -- keeping his wife and two small sons in a household in Chelsea and spending his evenings with handsome young men in London's restaurants and hotels.

All of that came crashing down when the Marquess of Queensberry, the father of Wilde's beloved young Lord Alfred Douglas, left a card at Wilde's club accusing him of "posing" as a "Somdomite" (sic) -- a Sodomite, or homosexual. Wilde accused Queensberry of criminal libel, but when the playwright's dalliances came out in court he was forced to drop his case.

In return, Queen Victoria's government charged Wilde with "gross indecency" -- "the gravest of all offenses," as one officer of the court described it. One trial wound up with a hung jury, but the next ended in conviction. Wilde was sentenced to two year's hard labor, and he died of an injury he suffered in prison only three years after his release. He never wrote another play.

Kaufman's re-creation of these events is a courtroom drama, to be sure, but it's a courtroom drama of a more complicated and compelling kind. Woven together almost completely from documents of Wilde's time and from memoirs of those

In the tiny theater at the historical museum, the result is alluring: You're always aware these are actors telling a real-life story, but you're also part of the play. When the judge asks the jury for their decision, you almost have to respond.

Director Michael Carleton and his company are used to working in this small space, and Carleton knows how to use the aisles and the back of the theater to bring the action to the audience. The festival's actors also are well-versed in the style of direct address that this show requires, and Carleton has led the company in a rapid-fire pace that keeps you leaning forward to keep up. All but one of the cast members also serve as narrators, and they shift from one character to another so seamlessly, and often humorously, that the shift itself is part of the show.

Witness Michael Dressel, who moves from an Irish-accented George Bernard Shaw to a plummy Queen Victoria in crown and veil. Or witness Mandi Moss as a cigar-waving American writer, Frank Harris, or an openly contemptuous boy for hire. Moss and Sarah Hankins play mostly male roles, and they do so with a verve that reminds you how disarming theater can be.

Kermit Brown makes a wild-eyed, self-righteous Queensberry, and Richard Width makes of Lord Alfred Douglas -- Wilde's beloved Bosie -- a weak but still devoted creature, with a hint of his father's ill temper but a pathos all his own. Eric Hissom, so recently Macbeth, is almost unrecognizable as Wilde's mild-mannered attorney; Richard B. Watson finds the humor in Queensberry's sputtering defender, and Arik Basso must be mentioned as another of the insouciant "rent boys" who bring Wilde down.

As Wilde, Jim Helsinger starts out strutting like a peacock, his chest puffed out, his head thrown back and his arm stretched to one side as if he's leaning ever so slightly on a silver-handled cane. This Wilde is dressed like a peacock as well, in a caramel-colored suit and teal-blue vest and cravat, and at the beginning all of his immense self-satisfaction is displayed in his smile.

Yet one verbal misstep -- one tossed-off remark -- and this Wilde begins to disintegrate: He loses his jacket, and then his tie, and by the end of the play he looks exhausted, as if those superficial trappings were what gave him life.

It's a terrific performance, but it's only one key to this intricately woven play, in which Wilde's insistence on the importance of art and of the intellect begins to feel like a campaign that has not yet been won.

There were no heroes in Wilde's particular battle. But the victory in Kaufman's art, and in the Shakespeare festival's, is to bring Wilde's art -- and his battle -- back to life.

That's what he did a century ago -- scandalizing the public with his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, grabbing the spotlight with his outlandish pronouncements and flamboyant attire, setting tongues to wagging over his three notorious trials.

And that's what Wilde is doing again, a century after his death, in Moises Kaufman's drama Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde.

If the Orlando-UCF Shakespeare Festival has its way, Wilde's own brand of provocation will surround its production of Kaufman's highly acclaimed play.

"This play is going to get a rise out of people," says Richard Width, an actor in the production. "This is a very confrontational play."

In Gross Indecency, Kaufman weaves together pieces of Wilde's own voluminous writings, sections of court transcripts and the memoirs and letters of other figures of the day to create a different kind of history -- a history that allows you to make up your mind for yourself.

The subject has lost none of its relevance over the past 105 years: the chain of events that took place after Wilde, who had been accused by the father of his young lover of "posing as a sodomite," sued the older man for slander and brought the wrath of repressive Victorian society onto his own head.

First produced in New York in 1997, Gross Indecency won praise all around. Time called it "dazzling," and Newsday "a stunning coup de theatre." Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner called it "a beautiful play."

For artistic director Jim Helsinger and his cohorts at the Orlando-UCF Shakespeare Festival, Gross Indecency is a chance to produce more of the kind of theater that is rooted in stage classics but challenges the way audiences look at a play.

"Today's theater typically uses a style we call realism, which allows you to have one point of view," says Helsinger, who plays the title role. "This attempts to tell the point of view of all the people involved. This is trying to say that history can have many points of view, and it leaves the audience to come to their opinion of it."

The playwright, in effect, sets the audience up as Wilde's jury. Says Michael Carleton, the show's director: "The audience has to ask itself the same questions that were imposed by this court 100 years ago."

In addition, Kaufman's play uses a group of narrators to play most of the characters, who address the audience directly from the stage. The audience is forced to become involved.

"It's important that the audience never forget that this is not created," says Width, who plays Wilde's controversial young lover, Lord Alfred Douglas. "This is an actual event."

Most people remember Wilde only as the writer of The Importance of Being Earnest, one of the funniest plays in the English language. Yet some people view him as something more important -- the cause, in fact, of a change in the way people looked at art, at artists and at life.

(Pictured, Richard Width, Jim Helsinger)  Wilde lost his court battles: He was sentenced to hard labor, and he died shortly afterward at the age of 46. But many people see him as having won a larger war.

"His plays weren't revolutionary plays," Carleton says. "But it's in his approach to life and art and how they intermingled that he really made his mark. He defined art as a way of life, not just as a profession.

"He was certainly convicted of a crime. But it's this trial and others like it that made us realize it's healthy to question the law. He was a catalyst to re-examine how we view the individual in society."

According to one character in the play, Wilde changed the way society looks at homosexuality. Before his trials, this character says, people were not defined by their sexual choices: The concept of homosexuality did not exist.

"What attracts me to this play," says Width, "is what attracts me to the works of Shakespeare. The issues it raises are issues that we still have to deal with -- homosexuality, the role of the arts and artists in society, the struggle to define the role of the artist. Wilde said that anything that provokes thought is good. A lot of what he was doing was to provoke active thought."

Not being defined by homosexuality, Width says, "is something the gay community is trying to move back toward. It's not the sole defining factor in a human being. People can say, 'Yes, I'm gay, but I'm also an artist or a politician or a writer. I'm more interested in talking about art than in talking about who I sleep with.'

"I really hope the audience hears the message -- that what defines a human being is so much more grand and magnificent than we can possibly even capture."

That may not be a message all Central Florida audiences want to hear, and the Shakespeare festival is curious to see how that message and others strike an audience accustomed to its madcap productions of The Complete History of American (abridged) or its Key West-flavored A Midsummer Night's Dream.

"Art is supposed to be controversial," Helsinger says. "Art is supposed to provoke our thoughts. The idea that art is supposed to conform to the current morals -- where did we get that? That means that art will never change."

He and the others involved in the production acknowledge what director Carleton puts into words -- that Wilde was not a hero, he was an artist, and that nothing in life is black and white.

"I don't think you're going to walk out with one gung-ho 'This is what I should think,' " Helsinger says. "Hopefully, you'll walk out conflicted.

"Maybe the best part of theater happens in the car on the way home."

With its production of "Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde," the Orlando-UCF Shakespeare Festival digs deeply into the wit and, more important, the woe of the legendary and flamboyantly outspoken writer.

Using transcripts of Wilde's days in court, playwright Moises Kaufman forms a moving depiction of one man's downfall at the hands of a puritanical society -- in this case, late 19th-century England. Wilde's troubles began in 1895 with his charge of libel against the Marquess of Queensberry, which led to his own subsequent trials where he was accused of "gross indecency" for his artistic ideals and homosexual practices.

The Shakespeare Festival's production, acted on a simple yet elegant set, is a primer for understanding the gifted literary artist who gave us such sharp comedic fare as "The Importance of Being Earnest" as well as the haunting "Picture of Dorian Gray," but who died in 1900, an exile in Paris.

Interspersed among the actual trial proceedings are quotes from the works of Wilde, George Bernard Shaw and others of their day, often providing disparate views. And although it is clear that Kaufman sides with Wilde, he allows the ruling sentiment of the times -- when a man could be taken to court for the propriety of his art and private behavior -- to loudly speak for itself on the absurdity of such judgments, then and now.

As Wilde, Jim Helsinger impressively takes the journey with his character, from his initial bravado in defending his name to the weary countenance of a defeated man. The actor easily finds within himself Wilde's droll social manner, as well as his eventual shock and disgust as his art is defiled in a court of law. Humorous as well as heartbreaking, it's a bravura performance.

Equally impressive but in a bad-guy role is Kermit Brown as Queensberry, who starts all the trouble after he finds out about Wilde's "sinful" relationship with his son, Lord Alfred Douglas. With a hearty, pompous delivery, Brown makes Queensberry a conquering buffoon.

Unlike the 1998 film "Wilde," released around the same time as the play debuted, "Gross Indecency" takes a more sympathetic look at Lord Alfred -- or Bosie, as he was endearingly referred to by Wilde. Richard Width provides a striking presence as Lord Alfred.

Eric Hissom, in a present-day scene that opens the second act, makes a brilliant display of his superb comic timing as a bumbling intellectual being interviewed about Wilde. And Richard B. Watson shifts effortlessly between his roles as a stodgy barrister and a young "rent boy" called to testify against Wilde.

The nine-member ensemble cast -- a mixture of younger actors and seasoned professionals -- takes on a number of roles, with the more experienced of the troupe performing more consistently.

Director Michael Carleton makes effective use of the small theater, and scenic designer Bob Phillips' imaginative use of curtains and draperies makes the performing space appear larger.

The imaginatively staged finale, based on "The House of Judgement," a prose piece written by Wilde a year after he was released from prison, having served two years of hard labor for homosexual practices, rings with the injustices he suffered for being true to himself and his art.

A sense of familiarity fills the auditorium just seconds into the Orlando-UCF Shakespeare Festival's powerful production of Moises Kaufman's Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde.  It's the directorial style of Michael Carleton, working its magic again just as it did during the Festival's mesmerizing staging of Macbeth in the autumn of 1999.

Carleton positions his actors across the entire stage and has them spurt out lines in stacatto fashion, from one side to the next and then back again. As a result, the viewer gets immediately wrapped up in the play, much like a fan would in a tennis match. Back and forth, boom boom boom. Suddenly, you're hypnotized.

It doesn't hurt either that the Festival's talented cast works wonders in supporting Carleton's style.  The eight members etch fully-rounded, memorable personas (some taking on as many as six roles) out of short bursts of dialogue and flashes of spotlight (courtesy of lighting designer Eric Haugen).  The effect brings to mind the energy of a newsroom scampering for a headline on the latest story a quality which smartly supports the play's underlying theme: the media's need to sacrifice beauty and genius for the sake of a story.

Gross Indecency follows Oscar Wilde through his three trials for sodomy, as well as from the pinnacle of his success to his lowest depths of his disgrace.  But instead of presenting these events in a straight forward narrative, the show makes use of a more journalistic route.

Kaufman bases much of his play on actual events, with many of the scenes drawn from original transcripts and letters from the trials.  Because of this, the actors begin almost every line with an introduction to the source material.  This not only adds authenticity to the events, but also builds a counterpoint to the story.  We witness how many of the people involved with the case support Wilde at first but grow to loathe him by the end (the establishment sees to much of that).  Only those close to him seem to stick to their original opinions.

The play asks many questions as it heads towards its moving conclusion.  Each one deserves mention because it's impossible to discuss Wilde's work and life without them.  How can one judge art as a direct correlation of the artist's mind? (English lit. professors should take note, particularly when discussing Sylvia Plath.)  How can one commit a crime if he or she believes the act being committed is not wrong?  How can one put a label on the nature of love and its implications?  All of this receives much notice in the play and generates a strong sense of pathos when considering Wilde's fate.

But the theme of the establishment's need for conservatism holds the strongest implications.  By the time the play ends, with a poignant recital of one of Wilde's final poems, you truly feel the loss of one of the world's greatest literary talents.  Who knows what other masterful works he would have produced had nothing happened to him or had not ruined himself with his ego?

It's easy to forget Wilde was the world's first true literary celebrity.  Without Wilde, we might not have Hemingway or Fitzgerald or Mailer, those personalities people love for their self-destructive nature as much as their works.  So it's fitting then that Wilde in essence causes his own downfall.  Would his story be told otherwise?

There's a mesmerizing scene between Wilde (Festival Artistic Director Jim Helsinger) and the lawyer Carson (played with impeccable comic timing by Richard B. Watson, last seen in the Festival's Complete History of America) that exhibits Wilde's fallacy beautifully.  Carson badgers Wilde endlessly on his relationship to his male companions, and Wilde's answers not only deconstruct Carson's argument but also his personality. But then Wilde slips on his own words (feeling too assured of himself) and incriminates himself.  The moment proves Wilde is essentially human, and with that realization, his ego shatters.  The moment also foreshadows the more tumultuous events of the play's second act, which focuses on the next two trials.

The second act holds the production's only missteps.  It begins with a scene set at a talk show.  A host interviews a professor on Wilde's impact on the modern day.  While the scene brings upon some strong insights and proves Wilde's case and writings will last the test of time, it's also superfluous.  The rest of the drama infers all of these ideas much more effectively, and after the play ends, you're left to wonder why the scene was in the show in the first place.

Helsinger portrays Wilde as a delicious concoction, a person wrapped in his own excesses but inescapable of genius.  The play's first act, which enacts the first trial, presents Wilde at the peak of his game and gives Helsinger the chance to really shine.  He speaks his lines with pure delight, radiating a charm, humor and wit that would have made Wilde himself proud.  In fact, Helsinger is so good that when the show lifts the spotlight from him (such as in the first half of the second act), the show starts to grow distant.  Thankfully, he comes back into full perspective during the middle of the second act and the play snaps back into focus.

Aside from Helsinger, the only other actor with a strong presence is Richard Width.  He plays Lord Alfred Douglas, the young man in love with the literary legend.  His feelings for Wilde, as well as his awe for him, are so sincere that its easy to see why Wilde reciprocates them.

The rest of the cast, which includes Kermit Brown (devilishly animated as Marcus of Queensbury, among other roles), Eric Hissom (noble as Wilde's lawyer, Clarke), Sarah Hawkins, Mandi Moss, Michael Dressel and Arik Basso, does fantastic work, particularly in pacing the show and building towards its emotional conclusion.  The set by Bob Phillips transports the viewer to Victorian England, replete with juxtaposed senses of nobility and intimacy.

But essentially this production belongs to Helsinger and Carleton.  They take hold of you from the opening moments and don't let you go until long after the lights have come up.

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Not only did Moises Kaufman's play, directed by Michael Carleton, re-create the infamous trials, along with colorful material about life in late-Victorian London, it provided enough of Wilde's wit and work - from "The Picture of Dorian Gray" to "The Importance of Being Earnest" to define the 1890s, the "Mauve Decade."

It raised issues addressed by the three trials - is it fair to judge the artist by the work, or does art exist simply for its own sake? Was Wilde, like Dorian Gray, a monster and did he have unnatural tastes? And it gave the trials and their consequences - after serving two years hard labor, the author never saw his wife and children again, and never wrote another play - a context. It drew clear links between the repression of a century ago to current issues: censorship of art, freedom of expression as an individual, stereotypes and prejudices.

Wilde, played by Jim Helsinger, was at first as much a peacock as the one embroidered on his vest. Lips pursed, he delivered a series of amusing remarks that had the members of the court - 

all in dull black, white and gray - outraged or perplexed, and had the audience chuckling. Strutting, preening, Wilde poked fun at everything from the lawyer who read his poetry so flatly to the Victorian values of a society that was threatened by his ideals - all part of a privileged class that needed to mask its appetites, as Dorian Gray did.

But, as one trial follows another, the mood shifts. No longer so lighthearted as he beams at his "dear boy," Lord Alfred Douglas (Richard Width), he begins to see the dangers of his position, and its shattering outcome. By the third trial, after he refuses to join others whose behavior the court might view as "gross indecency" in fleeing to France, Wilde has been reduced, and his shimmering brilliance dimmed.

"Gross Indecency" tracks his trials, and the destruction of gossamer genius that resonates in today's intolerance of behavior and values that differ from the norm.

"Gross Indecency" is the most exquisite of productions, at turns strident and moving. It is many things, moods and personalities and little poetic moments; it is never, however, in any way gross or indecent.