DORIAN, a play by Phoebe Eclair-Powell and Owen Horsley, based on Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” directed by Mason Beggs, starring Kris Bartolomeo, Brian Brown, and Dave Spychalski. 3/28-4/13 Thu-Sat 7:30, Sat-Sun 2:00 produced by the Irish Classical Theatre Company, 625 Main Street, Buffalo, NY 14203. 853-ICTC (4282) irishclassical.com
RUNTIME: 2 hours, with an intermission
THUMBNAIL SKETCH: A thrilling and imaginative stage adaptation delves into Wilde’s own life story, intertwining it with the haunting narrative of Dorian Gray’s tragic downfall. This ambitiously queer retelling of The Portrait of Dorian Gray promises to captivate audiences with its daring blend of glamor, grotesque, and unabashed originality. Content Note: This play deals with sexual content, substance use, violence and death, injustice, and persecution of LGBTQ+ individuals.
THE PLAYERS, THE PLAY, AND THE PRODUCTION: Oscar Wilde believed that art should be valued for its beauty and only its beauty. Even entertainment value was beside the point. This belief seems quaint now that we are in an era where art and entertainment have been cooked down into a gluey substance we call (sigh) content—and more and more of that (sigh) content comes from the AI slop factory. Instead of demanding our attention, this (sigh) content is made to be pleasant background noise while we scroll through our social media feeds. #Watching
Thank god for the theater. Irish Classical Theater Company’s thrilling production of DORIAN is not just worthy of our full attention, but in fact demands it. Moving at a rat-a-tat pace Dorian blends modern pop culture references with Victorian manners. The show nimbly hops around through time and place, thumbing its nose at categories like fiction and non-fiction, as it interrogates history while never absolving any of its main players. If this sounds like a lot, well, it is. But in the best way. Personally, I didn’t once suffer a single phantom limb pain from being deprived of my phone’s presence in my life for a few hours.
I came into this show only knowing enough about the original Portrait of Dorian Grey to be able to chuckle knowingly when a character in a film or TV show referred to another (incongruously youthful) character as someone who must have a hideous portrait hidden in their attic. In other words, I knew next to nothing.
To my surprise, watching the show this way was exhilarating. Directed with wit and style by Mason Beggs, Dorian moves at a breakneck pace, intertwining the story of Wilde’s own downfall with Dorian’s. The show is meta (before Zuckerberg stole the word), explicitly inviting us to consider how Wilde resembles the three main characters in Dorian: the title character, Woot, and Basil.
Collin Ranney’s costuming design uses accessories as clever visual cues as to which character each actor is portraying. This is important, since the three men shift before our eyes, slipping out of one character and into another with the toss of their head and a change of hat.
Did I mention that the performances are brilliant? Kristopher Bartolomeo, as the title character (along with the characters Bose and Mrs. Vane) is equal parts charming and despicable. Though he begins the show as a naive young man, he is quickly pulled in a darker direction (no arm twisting is actually required; a joyous wheee accompanies his slide down the proverbial slippery slope). Basil and Woot, played by Brian Brown (he also portrays Robbie Ross, and several other characters) and Dave Spychalski (he also plays Dorian’s love interest Sylvia Vane and Oscar Wilde himself), respectively, are the angel and devil on Dorian’s shoulders. The former, in love with Dorian, urges him to be a better man, while the latter is passionate in his belief that life is meant for hedonism.
The Dorian drama is intermixed with Wilde’s own life. Like Dorian, we first find Wilde at the height of his popularity, and again, like Dorian, he chooses his friends (and lover) poorly. His disastrous choice of love interest deserts Wilde the minute the party ends. And end it does, when Wilde is put on trial, found guilty of gross indecency (aka being a homosexual), and serves two years of hard labor.
There are no happy endings here. And yet, the show is a lot of fun. Perhaps that’s because when blood spills in Dorian (and it does quite a few times), it does so in a cascade of red glitter. This choice is quite fitting for a show that, despite some very dark moments, sparkles from beginning to end.