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"Dorian Gray" by Matthew Bourne at the Edinburgh Festival
Matthew Bourne hasn't staged a play for three years. His company New Adventures transported around the world the “male” “Swan Lake” made back in the last century (they finally reached Moscow, more than ten years after the premiere), designed in the poisonous Disney tones of “The Nutcracker” (the characters live in an orphanage, they dream of happiness in the colors of disgusting candies), the surprisingly subtle, English, like Tower or Sherlock Holmes, “A Play Without Words” (glory to the Chekhov Festival - it also visited us). Now it has premiered at the Edinburgh Festival, bringing balletomanes from all over the world to Scotland. "Dorian Gray" was composed to music specially written for the performance by Terry Davis. This music is full of disco drive; The most audible parts of it are guitars and drums.Bourne brought the story of Oscar Wilde into our time. The main character (the role went to Richard Winsor, no mannerisms, no fine lines - muscles, an athlete's figure) became a fashion model, the artist Basil Hallward (Aaron Sillis) became a famous fashion photographer, and Lord Henry, by the will of Bourne, turned into Lady G., the housewife advertising agency (Michela Meazza).
The performance begins with the overture... to The Sleeping Beauty. Tchaikovsky is thundering in the soundtrack at full blast, and a man is sleeping on a wide bed in the middle of the stage. So he wakes up... and at the most pathetic moment he slams the alarm clock with his hand. “Beauty” ends as if she never existed. Well, yes, this is such a call.
The audience will still laugh a lot, especially in the first act. When Dorian (a waiter invited to serve a party at the agency) keeps getting in the way of the agency owner and the photographer. When, having achieved Hallward’s attention, he collapses with him into a desperate and frank duet, where camera clicks time the stages of undressing and changes in Dorian’s face, projections of “snapshots” immediately appear on the walls. When the image team works for the hero, which will give him everything - from a smile to an excellent suit. And when the advertising poster comes down from the grate - naked to the chest, Dorian “sells” the “Immortal” perfume.
Directors are divided into two categories - some make performances, after which we can talk about interpretations, versions, options. Compare their performances with those of other directors. And it happens (very rarely) that after watching a performance, you understand that “the topic is closed.” What came before is history and archive. And after that, nothing better—or rather—will happen.
That is, of course, time will pass, someone will compose something else, but now there is a feeling of a stage, the end of one era and the beginning of a new one. This was the case with Bourne’s “The Swan” - after it it is impossible to watch the old classic versions. Because there are other scenes in my head that correspond much more accurately to the music.
Same with Dorian Gray. After the performance it is obvious: yes, of course, a fashion model. And of course, the whole story about falling in love with Sibyl Vane, in terms of intensity, the intensity of instant feeling and severe disappointment, is a ballet, not a “dramatic” story.
In Wilde's novel, Dorian falls in love with the young actress who played Juliet, she is so touching, so sincere, so good. But theatrical truth has little in common with the truth of life - when the girl reciprocates his feelings and begins to speak from the stage in Shakespearean words about her artless feelings, Dorian feels insulted, his sense of beauty is humiliated. In the play, Dorian finds himself in the ballet theater for the first time and freezes when Romeo runs across the stage. A fluttering cloak, a sublimely languid gesture, an unearthly creature - that’s it, Dorian is gone, he abandons his companion Lady G. and goes on duty at the service entrance.
It was not worth leaving the boss - Gray has long been not only an employee, but also her lover (the scene when the madam invites the hero to take immediate action is one of the funniest in the play: the hero blinks his eyes and backs away, he is not ready for such happiness). But Dorian doesn’t care - he’s in love. Or he thinks he's in love.
Because the unearthly creature instantly disappoints him. This is on stage - the prince, Romeo, bliss and dreams. In reality - self-absorption (Bourne knows ballet dancers well), the manner of doing the splits in the middle of a crowd of guests and, in the moment of a love duet, busily pulling the instep and testing the flexibility of the foot (an excellent role by Christopher Marney). Scattered slippers, vanity, hysteria - a visit to the real world embitters Dorian to the point of cruelty. And when his lover overindulges in drugs, Dorian, who at first rushed to the phone, suddenly leaves the receiver and simply watches how the dancer writhes in convulsions until he calms down completely (here, it must be said, there is no pity for either the character or the audience - death from overdose was made with the strictness of sanitary education).
The second act is the story of the fall, the story of the journey to hell. (Completely earthly - Bourne's performance dispenses with the infernal component.) Dorian is also addicted to drugs to expand consciousness and, as a result, sees his double everywhere. He dances next to him in a nightclub for VIPs and looks into the neighboring mirror (both mirrors are covered with cracks, as if they were hit with a fist). Phantasmagoria of serial murders - flashing girls being strangled by Dorian; he does this so quickly that he himself does not have time to remember their faces (and the viewer does not have time to count them - one simply fell out of the central door, the other is dragged into the side door). The murder of Basil Hallward, because he, trying to restore contact with Dorian, begins to film him again, the same way he filmed during the first duet. But Dorian is no longer the same, Dorian is scared to be under such a close and precise gaze, he covers his head with his hands, struggles under the clicking camera as if he is being kicked. The murder looks almost like self-defense - Gray lowers his own heavy camera on the photographer's head. And the final murder is suicide: the hero strangles his double and falls lifeless.
Now he is truly immortal and forever young: in the photographs of rushing reporters. The owner of the agency, who was ahead of them, launders the blood of his victims from the ward, which will no longer bring trouble, and only after that lets the journalists in.
The Chekhov Festival promises to bring the play to Moscow next year. We can only hope that the management will not charge crazy prices and everyone will be able to watch Dorian Gray. In Edinburgh, an excellent ticket to the stalls could be bought for 30 pounds (just under 1,500 rubles), and a seat in the first row of the first tier, from where you can clearly see everything, for three times less.