Anne McElvoy on Theatre

Snook dazzles as Dorian Gray

WE START WITH A PICTURE: well, we would, given that Oscar Wilde’s quirky fin de siècle gothic horror, The Picture of Dorian Gray, is about the power of portraits and the quest for eternal youth, themes as old as the Greeks and as contemporary as the anti-aging mythology sold over a million beauty counters. The balancing allegories of human frailty and vanity are timeless. But Dorian, while treated to sundry film adaptations, has not often graced the stage. This may be because the baggy (and only) Oscar Wilde novel is really a series of vignettes with characters who can feel more like Pirandello constructs than flesh-and-blood. We meet Dorian and his libertine influencer, Lord Henry Wotton, and Basil Hallward, whose image will free Dorian to pursue a life of untrammelled…

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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, April 2024

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