Director’s notes/ Description

His sins and the passing of his youth are
transferred to a portrait painted by a besotted artist. Eventually
Dorian destroys all those who love him and in despair attacks his own
portrait. This revival of Paul Stebbings' highly successful
dramatisation combines Gothic horror story with a searching
psychological thriller,while live music enhances the action. The
production tours Europe from October 2008.

This is surely Oscar Wilde`s masterpeice, not least because here he  explores his own self with a rigor and honesty that none of his play´s approach. This is the story of a doomed and beautiful youth who swaps his soul for eternal youth until his own dark deeds drive him to despair, insanity and suicide. This is a truly modern Faust, his heaven is on earth and yet he turns it into hell. His obsession with the surface of things rather than a Faustian pursuit of knowledge marks him out as one of us. Oscar Wilde was a founder of all that we think of as "modern" for better  or for worse. He saw the dangers of the obsession with beauty above truth, of decoration above substance and youth above wisdom. But Oscar Wilde was of course the first openly homosexual great artist and THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY is also a polemic against bigotory and prejudice. It was frequently  quoted by defence and prosecution alike at the trial that led to his imprisonment and early death, a death that deprived English literature of a genius at the height of his powers. Oscar Wilde`s tragedy was foreshadowed in THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY, it remains both poignant  and relevant. It is also a wonderful thriller and a Gothic horror story.

TNT brings this masterpiece to the stage  with a compelling mix of startling imagery, newly composed music, action and humour. Wilde is a master of theatre and his prose is highly theatrical, the book lends itself to dramatisation. TNT`s text is based on the earlier more sharply focussed (and quickly censored) version of the novel. The production is brought to you by the Director Paul Stebbings, who`s recent work has been seen in some forty countries worldwide. Productions include Wilde`s CANTERVILLE GHOST, HAMLET and OLIVER TWIST. THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY was first presented by TNT in 2000 - this new production will build on the international success of the earlier one and create Wilde`s weird and wild world on the modern stage.

Oscar Wilde began his career as a critic not an artist and he and his characters in THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY analyse art to a degree that is quite unusual in a major artist. This is not say that what Wilde says about his own work is always “true” in an objective sense (Brecht suffers from this too)– but since the book even starts with a preface where Wilde lays out his philosophy, I think it enlightening to allow the author his voice.

No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style.

Vice and Virtue are to the artist materials for art.

Those who go beneath the surface do so at their own peril.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all.

All art is quite useless.

Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming.

They are elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty.

The above are from the preface to the second edition of THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY. Below are quotes by characters from the book, used in our
production:

Lord Henry: the aim of life is self development – to realise one’s nature perfectly. People are frightened of themselves nowadays. They have forgotten that the highest duty is not to others but to yourself.

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…you are wonderfully young, and youth is the one thing worth having. You have only a few years in which to live really, perfectly and fully. We never get back our youth. Live!**

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Basil: Dorian from the moment I met you, you have dominated my soul. I have worshipped you with far more romance of feeling than a man usually gives to a friend. Somehow, I have never loved a woman. I quite admit that I adored you madly, extravagantly, absurdly. Your perfect face made the world seem wonderful to my eyes and as I painted your picture I knew that every fleck of paint, every brush stroke would reveal my love. It was all very wrong and foolish. It is all wrong and foolish still.

Lord Henry (Quoting Wilde) The City of God is closed to us. Its gates are guarded by ignorance and to pass into heaven we have to surrender all in our nature that is most divine. It is enough that our fathers believed in God and good. Humanity has exhausted it faith. We cannot go back to the saint. There is far more to be learned from the sinner.

/Dorian: [to picture ]/ Why are you watching me with your beautiful cruel face and your wicked smile? You’ve taught me to love my own beauty. Will you now teach me to loathe my own soul? (Pause covers painting takes up mirror). Oh (sighs with pleasure). How can I hate myself? What is good is beautiful so what is beautiful must be good. No!
I will resist temptation! I will not see Lord Henry or listen to his subtle poisonous theories.

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It is quite common to a suggest that the three central characters of the novel are aspects of Oscar Wilde. This is his only major novel and surely his most revealing work. Dorian is the Oscar Wilde of his youth – his innocence and his beauty. Basil is Wilde the serious artist, the introvert who aspires to morality as he labours alone – his obsession is beauty for its own sake. Lord Henry is the public Oscar Wilde, the bon viveur, the master of wit, the notorious celebrity. Basil is also, of course, the secretive homosexual – although interestingly Wilde’s own predatory sex life was far less tortured than Basil’s even if it was concealed until the notorious trials. The novel was used as the main literary evidence against Wilde at his trials and it is plainly absurd to deny that THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY is the first significant novel to explore homosexuality. (Although a case could be made for Homer’s ILLIAD).

The three central characters are friends but also torture and corrupt each other. So Wilde tortured himself, indeed destroying himself as an artist and man with his provocative libel case against his lover’s father.

Despite the immorality of the characters (although Basil seems merely foolish in his infatuation rather than wrong), the book is surprisingly moral. Punishment comes to those who sin, despite Henry and Dorian denying that sin exists. Sybil and Basil are destroyed but also revenged. The dashing and amoral Henry becomes a tortured “hideous puppet”. The world is set to right. The action of the novel is moral, the ideas within it often not so. What are we to believe? Is there no ethical purpose in the book as Wilde insists?

To stage this work asks the director to make concrete things that on the page can be left vague. What are Henry’s crimes or the scandals that drive Basil to confront Dorian on the night of his murder? How physical is Basil’s infatuation with Dorian? Certainly we are not trapped in Victorian prejudice and moral hypocrisy, so we can approach what is, rather that what is only hinted at in the novel. But at the same time the novel only survives as literature if the issues are moral. Dorian, Basil and Henry are forgiven their sensuality by the standards of our time, but Henry and Dorian are not forgiven their dreadful treatment of others. Henry’s philosophy sounds dangerously fascist in it’s elevation of sensation and passion above moral judgement.

Dorian is a killer who kills without remorse. Basil is not a sinner on this scale but he certainly corrupts Dorian, not with homosexual feelings, but with self-love. Basil sows the seeds of Dorian’s doom because he teaches him that beauty is beyond goodness. He discovers too late that to love beauty without goodness is deeply corrupt.

The play and the novel upon which it is based cannot neatly resolve these contradictions. Wilde himself in his preface to the novel deepens these contradictions rather than illuminating the text. The glory of the novel, and we hope the play, is that it embraces these contradictions and creates a challenging work where our sympathies are not simply led by the central chracter. The audience have to make the decision- not if this play or book is a moral one – but what is morality? And especially what is morality when faced with the temptation of beauty.

Wilde himself wrote one thing in his Preface that sums up what I would believe to be the strength of the PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY:

“It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors”.

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Paul Stebbings 2008