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The Picture of Dorian Gray: Good Concept for Modernization, Shaky Execution

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The first five or ten minutes of the new streaming theatrical production “The Picture of Dorian Gray” are great. Captivating, stylized, and intriguing, the beginning switches between Zoom-style interviews of Joanna Lumley’s and Alfred Enoch’s characters as they share what they know about this story to Stephen Fry, investigating. It makes you curious and you want them to say more about whatever this tragic situation was and you’re excited to piece it all together. It’s an excellent start.

And then you meet Dorian (Fionn Whitehead), and it falls flat. The direction (and overall treatment) of him plus overly long scenes, sloooow conversations between him and other characters, and disappointing lack of clarity about the whole selling your soul thing all squander the splashy positivity of the opening and turn a colorful opportunity into an unfortunately drab and sluggish production.

The intent for the modernization of this classic story is decent: Instead of young hot man-about-town-Dorian being young and hot, getting a nice portrait painted of himself, and wishing for the nice portrait to age instead of his physical being, this Dorian gets a social media filter that makes his online appearance always young and beautiful. His friend Basil (Russell Tovey) makes him a special device for his phone that makes him look glowy and stuff online. So far, okay, sounds good.

My main problem (okay one of my three main problems) is that it’s entirely unclear what Basil knows about the cost, what Dorian expects it to be, and, for the love of god, WHY. (And any argument that uses answers from the original text are invalid.) Basil gives it to Dorian on his birthday, and asks Dorian what he would do for this magical* device. He says there’s a cost but never says what it is, and actual physical deterioration is really something you should make clear to the buyer. Dorian says something like “I would sell my soul” but is he aware that that apparently means “I’ll be chill with looking like a decaying corpse in about a week”? It’s unclear whether Basil is aware of this too.

*First main problem subsection b: This device of magical filters…exists. It’s called filters. We can already download and use filters and apps that make you look amazing and shiny without our physical body decaying and bleeding out the ears. Yes, his YouTube channel becomes successful too, but a) it’s unclear whether that was part of the deal or Basil was just assuming that with glowing selfies his friend would become popular online, and b) honestly with the Q Anon-style videos he starts posting (out of literally nowhere, another issue), he’d amass a large following without the device. There’s too much that I don’t buy or don’t understand about this deal that even a few sharper bits of dialogue would fix.

My second main problem: the pacing is horrendous. The Facetimes between Dorian and Sibyl, between Dorian and Harry (especially the epilogue), the birthday scene between Dorian and Basil, they all gooo ooooon fooooreverrrrr without much reason for it. If the show was a good 20 minutes shorter from cutting all the unnecessary pauses and silent stares, it would work better. There are so many editing decisions that went unmade. Like the ‘Social Media Safety’ web series character that Basil invents to try to assuage his guilt: why are we seeing this at all, let alone ENTIRE INTERNET SAFETY LECTURES instead of a few brief clips? (Okay maybe 25 minutes, actually.) And the introduction of Sibyl (Emma McDonald) showing like a dozen of her Instagram videos – we’d get what you were trying to say with like, 3. (So that’s 30 minutes.)

The third issue: Fionn looks like a normal fine-looking person that you can believe exists in real life, not some kind of one-in-a-million movie-star gorgeous where you would drop your jaw and ruin your life if you had the chance. He’s a normal kid. We’re told that this Dorian is so incredibly handsome and so ungodly charming that everyone falls in love with him and yet Dorian gets exactly zero chances to show any of that supposed charm. I mean, literally every. other. character says that they are madly wildly hopelessly in love with him, in some cases so much that they destroy their families. but like, WHY. and like, DON’T. Dorian was never given a chance to display any sort of charm to explain…any of it. When the foundation of the whole show rests on him being super hot and charming and he’s neither, that’s hard to come back from.

Apart from these crucial aspects, there were some nice bits. Alfred and Joanna’s scenes were mostly always entertaining, possibly why they are the most famous ones. I loved how much I hated Alfred’s mustache and how fake his accent sounded even though he’s British. And Joanna is always fun to watch, especially in her travel shows. I really liked the Great Gatsby-esque design for the screen cuts too, and Alfred’s study was amazing (except the carpet didn’t go).

I’m just disappointed that the updated concept failed to capitalize on its promise. It’s a good idea to show how much young people value their online appearance, but – even in a year where you’re not seeing anyone in real life – would you still pay for a better online look with bleeding out the ears? Also, if the message was that ugly thoughts show up on the face (as the end seemed to want to say), why did his face start uglying before the whole conspiracy business, and why did he *start* having these ugly thoughts? So much of the action felt unsupported. Also, I’m heavily confused about the end: Text on the screen explains that authorities found him next to the smashed chip and “recognized what it was”. Wha…what?

One more thing: what the heck is Sphinx?

The Picture of Dorian Gray is available to stream from March 16 – 31, and is co-produced by the Barn Theatre, Lawrence Batley Theatre, New Wolsey Theatre, Oxford Playhouse and Theatr Clwyd.

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