The Picture of Dorian Gray – Drama Studio, Sheffield
The Company brought Oscar Wilde’s philosophical gothic great ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ to Sheffield’s Drama Studio this week, and audiences lucky to attend are in for an impressive, arresting night of theatre.
This particular adaptation was born from the brain of George Shore, who co-directs this piece with Mark Todd. Shore’s script is refined and full of wry humour. In many cases the world-building is contingent upon the script, and here Shore exercises expressive vernacular with all the appropriate didactic bombast of Wilde’s upper-class late Victorian realm. I really enjoyed Shore’s reliance on subtext in dissecting the narrative, leaving an air of mystique surrounding the picture and the terms of Dorian’s negotiation with it. It’s a pointed, concise text that Shore has crafte...