The Picture of Dorian Gray, Sydney Theatre Company, Ros Packer Theatre, 28 Mar-14 May 2022

 

Oscar Wilde's tale of images, concealment, and reality gets its perfect production in this one-woman version adapted and directed by Kip Williams, and performed and dramaturged by Eryn Jean Norvill. Like all the best magic tricks, it starts with a bare stage, Norvill entering surrounded by a team of camera people and stage crew, starting Wilde's story as it begins with a conversation between the dandyish Lord Henry Wooton and the artist Basil Hallward. Norvill gets handed a cigarette into her left hand and at one camera angle (projected on a giant screen) she becomes the waspish Wooton. With a camera-change, she picks up a paintbrush with her right and becomes the diligent, moral Hallward. After maintaining these two personas for a while, with a bustle of costume assistants, a coat, and a wig, she becomes the dazzling youth Dorian Gray, the subject of Hallward's latest painting. Subsequent scenes involve her playing multiple roles simultaneously, some inserted into pre-filmed footage, sometimes playing one character at a dinner party with five others (also Norvill, all immaculately performed), and flowing through Wilde's tale to the horrific finale. It's a triumph of performance, of choreography, of stagecraft and of spectacle. 

Everyone involved is in top form - the stunt-like nature of the one-woman performance and the extensive use of video is overwhelmed by how clearly the narrative holds the audience and keeps us engaged through two hours of storytelling - this is compelling, alive theatre, not just empty virtuosity (though it shows off every element of Norvill's skills, never mind the massive skills of the technical team around her and behind the scenes. It's an astounding, gripping experience whether you know the source material well or are being introduced to it for the first time - capturing Wilde's tale of beauty and the darkness underneath, of the way art lies and the way it tells greater truths. It's a compelling story told engrossingly and it's absolutely not to be missed whenever it comes near you. It almost begs a rewatch, like all good magic tricks, to see just how it was pulled off, and like all good magic tricks, the answer is that you're in the hands of a skilled performer and their many assistants, and you'll only be able to glimpse how they achieve their effects, but be suitably gobsmacked that they were pulled off.

Already a major event in Australian Theatre History, I cannot imagine this production will do anything other than go from strength to strength.