The Picture of Dorian Gray | Adelaide Festival 2022 review

Eryn Jean Norvill is able to take on 26 characters and make them all memorable, while the major roles are exercises in virtuosity.

A portrait of Dorian Gray is here made possible by technology used with great elan.

There is a wow factor in the sheer brilliance and exuberance of the combination of onstage real-time performance and big screen projections.

A single performer is convincingly able to produce a whole cast of characters, helped by a dozen stage crew and multiple studio and steadycam cameras capturing and relaying many images at once.

The Picture of Dorian Gray - STC

In another show it could be regarded as misfortune, but here in Oscar Wilde’s masterpiece it is anything but carelessness.

This is a play about image, vanity, ego and solipsism.

The image is everything, and when, among all the cameras and crew, Dorian Gray pulls out a mobile phone and in real time pinches and pulls the image of his face into grotesquerie, the conviction driving this tale is absolutely at front and centre.

Dorian Gray, the Adonis, the beautiful, innocent boy – here portrayed by a woman, Eryn Jean Norvill – has his portrait painted so convincingly that he is persuaded to offer his soul to it in turn for retaining his perfect youth.

His timeless appearance offers a life of endless hedonism, then debauchery, but only his portrait shows the changes wreaked over the years.

The ridiculous tale would be unedifying if it were not for Oscar Wilde’s poise and wit, which takes us into society past, present and future where the power of facade over truth is pursued ruthlessly. Watch out for the Botox injections.

Gray’s patron Lord Henry quips one night at the theatre that it’s no good for one’s morals to see bad acting, and this production is very good for one’s morals.

Eryn Jean Norvill in The Picture of Dorian Gray. Picture: Daniel Boud

Norvill is able to take on 26 characters and make them all clear cut and memorable, while the major roles are exercises in virtuosity.

Magically, the projections on screens large and small move around the stage and take us right into the action, even as we watch the actor in real-time on stage dealing with a constant flow of prerecorded versions of herself, to the point of arguing with the narrator.

Director Kip Williams has pushed these elements beyond their normal boundaries to extract another level of wit beyond Wilde’s, creating a grand theatrical experience.