By Aashiq
Link: https://www.pictureofdoriangray.com
Available until: Performances every day until Wednesday 31st March. Access is for 48 hours.
Yes, I know I’ve already written one review today, but I needed cheering up. It didn’t work or anything, but I want to review it and if anyone tries to stop me, they’ll soon wish they hadn’t. I’m just not worth the stress.
Earlier in lockdown, Barn Theatre, the Lawrence Batley Theatre and New Wolsey Theatre did a
play/film together called What a Carve Up!. Luckily, the public saw its
brilliance, and its success meant that the theatres decided to team up again
for a new project, only this time they let the Oxford Playhouse and Theatr
Clwyd in on it. Which makes it a proper international production, but it did
confuse me, going to the theatre websites and seeing that every theatre in
existence had decided to do Dorian Gray all at the same time. It was
like A Christmas Carol all over again, only without the turkey. It was
only once they all started showing identical images for their productions that
I realised the whole world hadn’t gone Wilde.
The story has been updated to 2020 with references to the lockdown, masks and annoying things like that. I’m not sure that totally works because everyone is going to parties together and not wearing a mask and not one of them seems to get arrested. But I quite see that in a production like this, a national lockdown is probably the only way of stopping all the characters from jumping on each other (it didn’t happen in the original, but laws and conventions are totally different now) and that couldn’t happen because, you know, we’re in a real national lockdown here.
The other thing I wasn’t totally sure about is the way Dorian’s life seems to be being turned into a documentary. It actually works really well, but What a Carve Up! was written as a documentary too and unless the theatres are planning on making a whole series of docuplays (which I’m actually okay with because of the whole ‘more plays’ thing), it would have been nice to see it approached from a different angle.
Another thing that’s changed is that there’s no portrait and Dorian stays twenty-one for the rest of the story – there’s a big twenty-five year gap in the book. This version has no magic and is rooted firmly in reality… in the most ironic possible way.
It’s a great production. The characters are there, the main elements of the plot are still there and Henry Filloux-Bennett has created a really strong modern adaptation of the story which is true to the spirit of the original, makes sense in the modern world and has a lot to say about modern society and how obsessed we all are with appearances, whether that’s wearing the right clothes, using the right filters, saying the right things, knowing the right people, fornicating with the right people, posting the right content and then wanting to die when everyone else says you’re a four-letter word beginning with S… it’s exhausting being a young person. I’m sure it’s exhausting not being a not so young person too, but I don’t plan on finding that out for at least another twenty years (so if anyone out there knows a good portrait artist…).
Tamara Harvey from Theatr Clwyd is the director and the action cuts smoothly between the past and the present. It’s been shot in various locations including bedrooms, clubs, studios and a very nice house, with some very interestingly-shot scenes. There’s a great break-up scene (well, it’s great if you’re not the one being dumped), filmed from above, and you can just imagine someone leaning over the wall and filming it for their social media.
Fionn Whitehead has the right looks for Dorian, not just in terms of being insanely gorgeous, but by being all haunting and yearning and mysterious. He has a quality that makes you want to keep watching, no matter how much of a little pile of faeces Dorian is being. Alfred Enoch is suave, charming and not at all bad-looking himself as Harry Wootton (Sir Henry in the original) – Alfred’s other lockdown appearances include What a Carve Up!, Crave and Red and he has an incredible range as an actor. It’s not just about the words, his physicality is a big part of each role he plays.
Russell Tovey is just right as Basil – recognisable as annoying to the characters but not annoying to his audience. Emma McDonald’s career as an actor will far surpass her character Sibyl Vane’s – her talent is out of this world and she speaks Shakespeare and Jane Austen so beautifully and with so much meaning. Joanna Lumley is a classy Lady Narborough in a wonderfully-nuanced performance. If I ever admit to being in my seventies (which I probably won’t do till I’m at least a hundred), I could do a lot worse than be a male Joanna Lumley.
I was a bit shocked when I found out Stephen Fry was the interviewer – he sounds so much like an interviewer and so not like Stephen Fry. Rachan Wonderful La Dolce Veta-Bella makes the most gorgeous cameo ever as Harry’s horse. (If I had to ride one of the characters in this play, it would definitely be the horse.)
In theory, I disapprove massively and they should have not messed with this brilliant story and just told it properly.
In practice, I enjoyed this far too much to pretend I
didn’t.
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