I was always taught, and always teach, that drama occurs in the present tense – that theatre’s most valuable asset as a mode of storytelling lay in its presentation of the here and now, a story unfolding before you. This production/adaptation of Wilde’s classic novel makes the bold decision to deliver a retrospective narration: Dorian is already dead and we are being given the story of his rise and fall through a series of interviews or web footage. Due to Covid19 restrictions, we never see two characters together in the same place; what we get, in a sense, is a series of monologues, with the exception of an online chat between Dorian (FIONN WHITEHEAD) and Sibyl Vane (EMMA McDONALD) and the crucial scene between Basil Hallward (RUSSELL TOVEY) and Dorian in which the pact is made, only here, in this update, Hallward is a software genius and what remains eternally youthful and beautiful is Dorian’s online persona. IRL, Dorian’s appearance turns as rancid and distasteful as the life he’s living, his addictive no longer to opium but today’s equivalent: social media popularity. In Wilde’s novel, the character of Lady Narborough is slight and inconsequential, but here it’s bigged up into a showpiece fit for JOANNA LUMLEY at her imperious best and STEPHEN FRY adds another National Treasure to the crown. TOVEY is underused, especially visually (he says impartially!), although ALFRED ENOCH’s Harry Wotton is a performance you want to lick |
Whilst I’m all for putting new wine into old bottles, this felt more mild than Wilde. What the piece lacks in dramatic impact it gains in social worthiness and topicality.
From Lady Narborough’s line about the effect of Covid on theatre to the broadcasts on the effects of social media on students’ mental health, the piece strains for contemporary relevance. But I can’t help thinking of Wilde’s definition of the critic as someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing, so in true Wildean fashion must end by saying, “Not that I agree with everything that I have said in this essay. There is much with which I entirely disagree.”
Directed by Tamara Harvey. The Barn Theatre, the Lawrence Batley Theatre, the New Wolsey Theatre,
Oxford Playhouse, and Theatr Clwyd are co-producers for the production.Review by Jonathan Kemp
Queerguru London Contributing Editor Jonathan Kemp writes fiction and non-fiction and teaches creative writing at Middlesex University. He is the author of two novels – London Triptych (2010), which won the 2011 Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award, and Ghosting (2015) – and the short-story collection Twentysix. (2011, all published by Myriad Editions). Non-fiction works include The Penetrated Male (2012) and Homotopia?: Gay Identity, Sameness and the Politics of Desire (2015, both Punctum Books).
