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| Eryn Jean Norvill in The Picture of Dorian Gray |
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The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Adapted and directed by Kip
Williams. Featuring Eryn Jean Norvill. Designer Marg Horwell. Lighting Designer
Nick Schlieper. Composer and Sound Designer Clemence Williams. Video designer
David Bergman, Sydney Theatre Company. Adelaide Festival. March 14-20 2022
Reviewed by Peter Wilkins
Director Kip Williams’s
production of The Portrait of Dorian Gray is nothing short of genius, brilliantly
worthy of Oscar Wilde’s moral tale of vanity and destruction. At its heart is
Eryn Jean Norvill’s staggeringly magnificent performance, not only of the Adonis
like Dorian Gray, but every character in Wilde’s novel. The entire show is a
magical feat of technological wizardry and perfect timing, augmented by David
Bergman’s ingenious video design, roaming videographers, costume dressers and mobile phones.
On stage Norvill plays the roles
for the cameras. The performances are projected on to the screens that fly in to
depict the scenes, while the stage hands/video operators and dressers change on
stage sets, dress Norvill in view of the audience, hand her props both on
the stage and into the video. At times Norvill
enters a video with herself in both roles of Basil Hallward, the unfortunate
artist and the corrupting Lord Henry Wooton. With a commanding vocal range,
Norvill sits at a table on the stage at one point as the beautiful Dorian Gray
conversing with her own filmed characterizations of Wilde’s lampooned figures
of society. Norvill assumes with such conviction, ease and gesture Wilde’s array
of social elite such as Wooton’s Aunt Agatha, the facile Duchess of Monmouth and
Sir Thomas the obsequious politician. Norvill’s range is phenomenal, her changes
mercurial and Williams’s production moves at a riveting pace.
The stage
personnel move with lightning precision, changing sets, filming the moment, and
changing costumes, hairstyles and props before the amazed eyes of the audience.
Williams’s production is a magic
lantern production for the modern age. And yet the period is realized with
authentic design by Marg Horwell, who captures the sumptuous opulence of the period
and the art from Velasquez to Rossetti. Every aspect of creative design
is impeccably researched from Horwell’s costume and set design to Nick
Schlieper’s atmospheric lighting design and Clemence Williams’s composition and
sound design . Combining the simple notes of the piano with the stirring rhythms
of the classical and the contemporary use of musical comedy and rock, Williams’s
composition is the evocation of the narrative. At one point, Norvill mimes
Barbara Harris’s gutsy rendition of Passionaella’s “Look At Me I am Gorgeous” from
Harnick and Bock’s The Apple Tree. It
is the perfect number to express Dorian Gray’s vanity and narcissm. Wilde’s
dark and cautionary tale about a beautiful young man’s corruption and descent
into vile degradation is given new life and relevance in the Sydney Theatre
Company production.
But this is no tricky gimmickry with new age technology. It
remains true to Wilde’s satirical comment on his society and class. It is no
tired drama, seeking to stage a faithful production of a Victorian novel. It is
a dynamic, exhilarating re-imagining of Wilde’s moral tale with all the wonder
and magic of the visual, the aural and the sensory delights of the theatre.
Wilde’s wit shines brightly in Norvill’s performance. Such classic dictums as “The
only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about” colour
Wilde’s dramatic accounts of Gray’s destruction of the actress Sybil Vane, his
devilish descent into degradation, his murderous deeds and his eventual
confrontation with guilt and remorse.
Throughout it all the stage is alive with the motion and drama of impending
doom and the sense of loss captured with
remarkable reality by Norvill in a performance that raises her to the
echelon of one of Australia’s leading actors.
This is not the first time that
Williams has played with technology. I
recall his production of The Irresistible
Rise of Arturo Ui and more recently his three actor Julius Caesar. But his
direction of The Picture of Dorian Gray exceeds
all. It is an awe-inspiring flight of the imagination, which with Norvill and
his creative team has not only brought Wilde’s wit and wisdom on to the
contemporary stage, but has redefined the way theatre can excite and move
audiences of our time. It is the New Age Theatre that like Wilde in his day can
revitalize art and “hold as 'twere the mirror up to Nature” for all to see
through the prism of our age.
The Sydney Theatree Company’s startling production of The Picture of Dorian Gray is tour de force theatre that needs to be
and must be seen. It is unmissable theatre at its very best!
Photos by Daniel Boud