Helen Peacocke marvels at the style of Corin Redgrave at the Oxford Playhouse

If you are terribly selective about what you see at the theatre and only go annually, as long as that visit is this week and the theatre you select is the Oxford Playhouse, you will have provided your mind with all the theatrical stimulation it needs to see you through.

Corin RedgraveCorin Redgrave has taken centre stage to perform one of the most moving love letters ever written - and breathes life into every word. De Profundis was written by Oscar Wilde while he was in prison in 1897, to his lover Lord Alfred Douglas (Bosie). It was written between January and March on 20 folio sheets of blue-ruled prison paper with the royal coat of arms stamped at the head of each one, and was the final literary outpouring of a great mind.

Skilful and sensitive editing by Merlin Holland, Wilde's grandson, has condensed this mammoth work into 60 minutes of dialogue which says everything that has to be said and lays bare Wilde's dreadful anguish.

De Profundis was originally produced at the Royal National Theatre last November to mark the centenary of Wilde's death. It is presented in association with Moving Theatre, which Corin and his sister Vanessa formed in 1994, and directed by both Corin and Trevor Nunn.

Although it's most definitely a love letter, there's nothing sentimental about its contents or the way in which Corin plays it. Had it been a letter written during the first flush of new love, no doubt it would have been full of intense declarations, rather than Wilde's acceptance of his artistic and moral destruction by a lion cub who grows up to destroy his master

It is a letter filled with a torrent of angry accusations, recriminations and passion, until eventually, having written himself out, Wilde reaches an extraordinary state of understanding and reconciliation, even suggesting that there is beauty in sorrow.

Dressed in prison garb, shoes without laces, grey garments set against grey surroundings, lightened only by a small patch of sky flecked with moving clouds, Corin Redgrave begins. Within seconds he's totally in command of both the work and his audience.

We see before us not just a man imprisoned by bars, but by a love which is so intense its cost is actually spelt out, not only in pain, but in hard cash too. After all, it was Bosie's extravagant demands that lead Wilde to bankruptcy, having spent as much as £130 a week on dinners where too much is eaten, and too much is drunk.

As Corin Redgrave masterfully brings this work to a close, we are left to reflect on both the meaning of sorrow and its beauty, and the incredible power of language.