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 crafted to great effect and elicits great dramatic function.
Shore and Todd respectively demonstrate focussed directorial prowess in this production. The set is aptly decorative and the costumes and props are quaint. There’s a lot of professional sensibility in the direction, particularly through their measurement of character arcs and emotional trajectories – both for the individual characters and the summary of their experiences in story. There’s a decent understanding of proxemics, and there is a strong textual understanding particularly in some of the play’s more metaphorical (and literal) confrontations.
Speaking on the cast, there are some fine and refreshingly detailed performances on show here. Gabriel Morely’s portrayal of the titular character leans more into the man-child aspect of Gray, but this is surprisingly suitable and captivating. Morely greatly balances Gray’s callous and unblinking narcissism with a ferocious vulnerability that evokes compelling, dangerous tantrums. Gray’s emotive outbursts are appropriately pervasive and Morely presents themselves as a very lucid vessel for the explosive madness of the ever-young Lord. Equally his performance possesses a tempered, arrogant pseudo-solicitude which establishes Gray as the magnetic figure of high society he is. Gray’s accent does wander at times to something less reminiscent of 1890’s British high society, with short Americanised ‘a’ pronunciation appearing every now and again, but fortunately their performance is mostly consistent, and this doesn’t pull too much focus from the good work on show.
Luke Mosley’s Lord Harry Wotton is excellent too. He is remarkably well detailed – his portrayal of the self-centred, dismissive pomp of Lord Harry is thorough and deeply entertaining. There is bombast and joviality marred by a sinister and cynical conviction that paints a vivid image of the contradictory nature of the class he represents. Mosley’s Wotton is highly communicative, their physicality conveying much of the inexplicit disregard and conceit of the man. An effective figure of comedy and jeopardy, Mosley delivers a truly adept performance.
This large cast is fortunate to be inundated with focussed and confident performances. Mandy Simms and Iona Wilkins portray the Vanes with great quality and poise. Paul Heelis’ Basil is appropriately sensitive and conflicted with an appealing tenderness to them. Laura Payne’s Gladys and Ann O’Connell’s Mrs Leaf are also playfully confrontational to Gray, and this is executed well. Each person who takes the stage gets their moment and rises to it well, whether it be in graveyards or seedy bars where some of the city’s recurring characters influence the narrative. It’s a very comprehensive collection of performances.
The show does lose some of its legs in the second act, perhaps through no help of Wilde’s original sequence of events and Shore’s attempts to herd it. The text begins to think laterally, and the environment is shifted plenty, providing a practical challenge for the team which they can only temper with a black curtain shortening the performance space. It’s sufficient, but not without detriment. We are introduced to more characters and Gray’s older life without bearing witness to many of the supposed hedonistic horrors and acts that ingratiate sin – instead being taken on shooting trips or swept up in short-lived, semi-romantic relations that lead nowhere and do not efficiently unravel the buried nuance of Gray’s guilt. That’s not to say that we need shock and awe – what this show actually does better than that is infer and tease much of Gray’s reputation building (although the pinnacle of his depravity in murder we do see of course) – it’s to say that there was a perceived hollowness to much of the second act that slightly hampered the momentum of the plot that the fascinating close of act one provided.
‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ is a classic that warrants a greatly efforted and talented production to elicit much of the story’s best qualities and The Company do an excellent job taking on this rich, cautionary tale. The show is running at the Drama Studio until Saturday 7th March. Tickets available here: https://www.ticketsource.com/thecompanysheffield/the-picture-of-dorian-gray/e-zeezvq?utm_source=ig&utm_medium=social&utm_content=link_in_bio&fbclid=PAdGRleAQWeMVleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZA8xMjQwMjQ1NzQyODc0MTQAAaf9kS7egAzi5xmQSoKMExY1VGTaFIPC2kJ-wrj7OMs9rtCnyzvZ9JEd1xAE2w_aem_QVJUBdfrYgpkEocLPnWvcQ
Reviewer: Nathan Dunn
Reviewed: 4th March 2026
North West End UK Rating: