By Joseph Hurley
THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY, adapted and directed by Joe O’Byrne. Starring Paul Vincent Black, Crispin Freeman, Nick Hetherington, Tertia Lynch, Colleen Madden, Paul Anthony McGrane, Daniel Pearce, Angela Pierce, Andrew Seear, Timothy Smallwood. At Irish Repertory Theatre. Through May 6.
The Irish Repertory Theatre is currently experiencing an infestation of insects, with brightly colored butterflies and vastly overscaled humming bees, accompanied by a bluebird or two, swarming over and through its production of Dublin-based director Joe O’Byrne’s new adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s novella, "The Picture of Dorian Gray."
At one point, O’Byrne’s peculiar, albeit inventive take on the author’s 1891 classic, approaches self-parody as the winged creatures, strapped to the hands of six ensemble members, flutter and dart in an attempt to pollinate a pot of large white flowers held upright by another member of the company in a scene taking place in the garden of the work’s eponymous hero’s townhouse in Victorian London.
There is a distinct Oriental feeling to much of this particular version of the tale, with a Japanese Sakuhatchi flute underscoring certain scenes, and even the sound of woodblocks here and there.
These Asian incursions, supposedly suggested by the original text, may be a reflection of the impact made by a Japanese exhibition in a London museum a few years before the publication of "Dorian Gray," a show that had stunned the city’s artistic community and, if writer-director Mike Leigh’s film, "Topsy-Turvy," is to be believed, led directly to the creation, in 1885, of the Gilbert-and-Sullivan warhorse, "The Mikado."
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"The Picture of Dorian Gray" is perhaps best-known to American audiences as the source of MGM’s 1945 film version, which, among other things, marked the movie debut of Angela Lansbury, who got the part of actress Sybil Vane because her face was said to resemble the Victorian ideal of feminine beauty, especially, according to critic James Agee, as seen in pornographic prints of the era.
As produced by the Irish Rep, the story, which Wilde published in the same year that he began his disastrous relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas, better known as Bosie, contains undertones that are even darker and more menacing than those found in other, more conventional renderings of the tale.
Wilde’s story is basically a kind of Faust variant without a specific Mephistopheles. Dorian Gray, a dashing young man of a somewhat clouded background, is, being exceedingly handsome, welcomed into London society, enjoying a position of desirability he has attained primarily, if not exclusively, on the merits of physical appearance.
Nothing if not self-aware, Dorian knows his situation, and when Basil, a fashionable portraitist, offers to paint him, he agrees. The result, somewhat awkwardly rendered in the Irish Rep production, so pleases its subject that he voices a wish that he might always remain the same, the youthful and alluring young man in the picture, while the canvas itself, hidden away in the upper reaches of the old house, would take on the burden of the passing years.
What Dorian Gray doesn’t realize is that, in addition to the wrinkles and the sagging flesh, the portrait in the attic would come to reflect the moral corruption of its subject’s soul, and would serve as an accurate reflection of his psychological and emotional state, not to mention being a searing indictment of his entire wasted life.
Some Wilde experts have viewed "The Picture of Dorian Gray" as the writer’s warning, conscious or unconscious, to himself as to the potential dangers lurking behind his recently begun relationship with Bosie, and the murky, lethal waters into which such a union might lead him.
Since the publication of the book and the entrance of Bosie in his life were more or less simultaneous events, it seems probable that Wilde’s self-admonishments were mainly unconscious, reflecting the risks that, as an intelligent man, he has to have known were part of the double life on which he was recklessly embarking.
O’Byrne’s approach to the material is imaginative on the one hand, but, from time to time, woefully pretentious on the other, with a company of 10 performers undertaking a couple of dozen "roles." Some these are those ever-present, ever-intrusive "ensemble" members, functioning as rather fancy equivalents of the "invisible stagehands" often present in Oriental theatrical productions.
Here they whisper and flutter, repeating words and lines like guests at a Victorian ball suddenly press-ganged into service as a Greek chorus, performing such duties as the test requires. If a knife is required, the figure known as "Shadow One," deftly handled by Rep regular Paul Anthony McGrane, is ready with a razor-sharp blade.
If, at another moment, the script refers to Dorian’s newfound fascination with fabrics, jewelry and ecclesiastical garb, the "Shadow" is right there to display examples, like an obsequious clerk in an overpriced Madison Avenue boutique.
In a way, O’Byrne’s directorial embroidery tends to obscure, and even obliterate, certain simple aspects of Wilde’s powerful cautionary tale. The cast, in David Toser’s eloquent costuming, moves gracefully around the all-black setting provided by Akira Yoshimura and Rebecca Vary, but the sad truth is that their nearly constant presence often serves as a reminder of the limitations of the Rep’s playing area. In one scene in the locked chamber in which the painting is sequestered, the presence of the buzzing, whispering gaggle of actors may remind you of a clutch of shoppers trapped in a stalled elevator at Bloomingdale’s.
O’Byrne’s cast, mainly new to the Rep, is far from the strongest the group has ever fielded, probably due to the productions’ lamentable clutter. Daniel Pearce’s vainglorious Lord Henry comes over as a sort of billboard onto which an assortment of Wildean aphorisms has been tacked with push-pins, as opposed to a living human being, while Andrew Seear’s Basil seems clouded and vague, eventually vanishing almost entirely in the mists of the production’s pretensions. The unrelenting emptiness of Crispin Freeman’s Dorian is probably unavoidable, but it isn’t terribly interesting to watch.
A few actors do make their marks. Tertia Lynch is an appealing Sybil, particularly playing a luckless Juliet opposite the sagging Romeo amusingly conjured up by Paul Vincent Black. Another rep stalwart, Timothy Smallwood, who’s the one holding those fake flowers early on, does admirably elsewhere, particularly turning in an acid-etched miniature as one of Dorian’s compromised victims in the play’s terminal sequences.
The Irish Rep, turning in increasingly admirable work as the seasons go by, is to be praised for attempting to create new works for the theater, even when the results, as is the case with "The Picture of Dorian Gray," are mixed.