Simon Ward reviews Dorian :The Musical at the Southwark Playhouse Borough

With book by Linnie Reedman and music and lyrics by Joe Evans, this loose adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s 1890s novel A Portrait of Dorian Gray feels like an attempt to re-imagine the story as Wilde might have told it today, in a world where homosexuality is no longer a crime – love can now speak its name. Adding a musical dimension is a way to let the characters express their feelings more deeply and fervently, as well as deliciously evoking a world of seedy amoral nightlife.

There is a somewhat uneasy tension, though, between the language and mores of a Victorian novel and the modern world of mobile phones, electric guitars and recording contracts which the characters inhabit. For instance, the play opens on a funeral scene with mourners in full mourning veils before one of them pulls out their mobile and arranges a rendezvous in a club. The effect could be comic, but that doesn’t seem to be the intention. We are simply asked to believe in a world which, in appearance, feels Victorian, Gothick and melodramatic, but purports to be modern. For me, this is never satisfactorily resolved . It might have been more successful to have gone for a complete update to modern times, albeit possibly at the cost of some Wildean aphorisms.

In the title role of Dorian Gray, Alfie Friedman has the requisite brooding good looks and he puts over the songs well. Perhaps there could have been some more light and shade in the characterisation – we don’t really feel the full horror of his situation dawning on him as he seems overwrought all the way through.

Any staging of the Dorian Gray story will face a number of challenges. Wilde can tell us that the portrait of the beautiful young man is increasingly marked and distorted by his life of sin and debauchery and our imagination will do the rest. On stage we need to see something, which would very easily end in bathos. I thought this challenge was met rather well – a combination of lighting and distance made for a good picture of horror. Another challenge which was not really dealt with was how to represent ageing – many years are supposed to have passed and Dorian is meant to be amazingly preserved while everyone else has aged. As far as I could see there was no attempt to age anyone so we just had to take it on trust that time had passed. This did not really work, and simply made it odd when people were discussing how Dorian had remained unchanged when no-one had changed at all.

It is a strong cast, but Megan Hill stands out in the dual role of Sybil and Fabian Vane. They bring some genuine pathos to the tragically deluded Sybil, and a feisty energy to her sister Fabian. George Renshaw is convincing as Harry Wooton, Dorian’s patron and lover, as is Gabrielle Lewis-Dobson who plays his wife Victoria with a spiky bitterness reflecting how unimportant she is in his life.

In the end this is a kind of Gothick fable and the show never quite overcomes the awkwardness of relocation to a modern setting and as a result does not take flight as well as it ought to. Some of the music works well – Blood and Vice which opens the second act is a great evocation of a seedy underworld – and there is a great guitar solo. Overall this is a brave and well-resourced attempt to bring a Wildean classic to the stage – for me, a more full-blooded updating, and a greater leavening of humour, might have made it more successful.

Dorian:The Musical runs until 10th August at Southwark Playhouse Borough, 77-85 Newington Causeway, London SE1 6BD