Review: Dorian Gray at the Birmingham Hippodrome
Dorian Gray,
Birmingham Hippodrome
Matthew Bourne’s latest endeavour takes Oscar Wilde’s Portrait of Dorian Gray and transports the tale into the present day as a bitter indictment of the cult of celebrity and search for everlasting youth.
In doing so he strips it down to its bare essentials – in more ways than one. Without words, language is portrayed through movement, with sets and costumes in black and white and a good deal of bare flesh on show.
This Dorian Gray is clearly sex-obsessed as well as self-obsessed as he gradually works his way through the cast wreaking havoc, and even death, along the way.
Richard Winsor is excellent as Dorian, beginning as a seemingly shy young man and concluding as a monster who turns on all who love and support him.
His muse and corrupter, Lady H, is played by a stalking Michela Meazza, while Jason Piper makes an achingly painful Basil – the man who discovers Dorian and is then destroyed by him.
While this has many Matthew Bourne hallmarks and moments of black comedy, there is also a sense that the story is being stretched and padded to fit its two-hour slot.
Until November 14.
VERDICT: 3/5
Diane Parkes
