Best left in the attic

Matthew Bourne’s Dorian Gray
Sadler’s Wells

I often wonder whether in a society so greedily obsessed with the commercial acquisition of good looks Dorian Gray’s disquieting handsomeness and prolonged youth would still mean anything. Liposuction, steroids, laser hair-removal and impossible fitness programmes have eroded and detracted from what once was the notion of ideal beauty, transforming the exceptional into the unexceptional. This is, in my view, the core problem of Matthew Bourne’s latest and much-hyped creation, Dorian Gray. By turning Oscar Wilde’s negative hero into a hunky supermodel, the ever so inventive dance maker inferred a lethal blow to the character’s intoxicating charisma; his Dorian, with cropped hair and chiselled body is merely one of the many hunks who invade our daily lives from the pages of every magazine. As such he has none of the ‘impossible’ beauty or outstanding diabolical seductiveness of his literary counterpart. Don’t get me wrong, though, such a shallow portrayal has nothing to do with Richard Winsor’s sound interpretation of the main role, but stems exclusively from the uneven dramaturgic and choreographic layout of the work itself.

Only now and then, hidden amid long stretches of tiresome and uninventive choreography, are glimpses of a vibrant modern-day theatrical reading of Wilde’s novel. Take, for instance, Dorian’s morbid fascination with the camera, which he flirts with and lusts for in the highly charged homoerotic duet between him and Bourne’s choreographic equivalent of Wilde’s Basil Hallward — portrayed here as an irresistibly debauched, long-haired fashion photographer (Aaron Sillis). The intense interaction with the camera, which doubles in the duet as a kinky toy and as a not-so-subtle metaphorical device — the final flash is more than obviously a climax — hints at the protagonist’s splendidly dark and twisted psychology.