The very picture of debauchery
IN 1890 Oscar Wilde published his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, a Gothic tale that has become an iconic modern myth. It’s the story of a beautiful young man of the English upper class who makes a Faustian wish never to grow old. Instead, he wishes that his newly painted portrait should bear the scars of time in his place.
Incredibly, it comes to pass. Dorian Gray stays forever young and, despite a life of immense hedonism and vice, he remains untainted. Meanwhile, hidden away in his attic, the portrait grows ever more hideous.
Happily, as part of this year’s Dublin Theatre Festival, the Abbey Theatre is premiering an adaptation of Wilde’s masterpiece, one directed by Neil Bartlett, a hugely influential figure in modern British theatre.
For his Dorian, Bartlett has drafted in new blood in Tom Canton, a young actor recently graduated from RADA. It’s a big part and the Abbey is a big stage on which to make your professional debut, yet the 22-year-old is taking it in his stride. “It is daunting,” he says in his striking deep voice. “But to have a script like this and to be working with people who are so good is a massive opportunity. I hope to do it justice.”
Canton has a cool self-composure about him. It should stand him in good stead as Dorian Gray, a character whose ageless beauty hides all manner of secret crimes, sins, and griefs. Sitting beside him in the Abbey bar, Bartlett reflects on what it was that he was looking for when he cast the young man. “Someone debauched,” chimes Canton. “Yes, someone with a deep understanding of debauchery,” Bartlett chimes back.
“There are an oddly fixed set of conventions around presenting anything by Oscar Wilde,” continues the director. “There are very strong expectations of how it should look. But I think the only reason to take on a text that is very well known is to bring something new to it. You have to say ‘Listen, I can see it in a way that you’ve never thought of before.’
“Tom’s look and his demeanour are very contemporary. Like Dorian, he is English, he’s got blond hair, he’s got blue eyes, he’s drop dead gorgeous. So he ticks all those boxes. But he’s also got a striking contemporary look.”
A waggish rapport between Bartlett and Canton is evident as they speak, and it calls to mind the similar connection between Dorian and his scandalous mentor, Lord Henry Wotton, in Wilde’s book. “I knew that’s what all the interviewers would say,” says Bartlett, laughing. “That I’m like Lord Henry. Am I like Lord Henry? Am I trying to corrupt you and destroy your soul, Tom?”
“Only in the best possible way,” replies the young actor.
“Lord Henry is actually a truly extraordinary character,” says Bartlett. “Much like Wilde himself did, he asks, ‘So what would life be like if there were no law except to follow your own principles?’. And that’s an extraordinary proposition, and one that Wilde paid the price for abiding by.”
One of the production’s big challenges will be to convey the constant changes of Dorian’s portrait. In the story we read of its ever more corrupted countenance. How will Bartlett reveal these gradual alterations? Already it appears to be causing intrigue.
“Someone asked me the other day was it going to be a hologram,” confides Canton. Bartlett is aghast.
“I don’t want to create some great big mystery about this because what we’re doing is incredibly simple and not spectacular,” he says. “We’re doing the painting by using Wilde’s words. We do exactly what Oscar Wilde does. He plants some suggestions in your mind, but he never tells you. So we will suggest what is there and the audience will paint the picture.”
Bartlett’s affection for Wilde’s work goes way back. In 1988, having already become a very successful director, he wrote the historical study Who Was That Man? A Present for Mr Oscar Wilde. The book reflected on the connections between Wilde’s existence as a young gay man in 1880s London and Bartlett’s own life as a gay man there in the era of Thatcherism. The Dublin writer remains an enormous influence.
Of course, Wilde’s homosexuality is important to an understanding The Picture of Dorian Gray. The cost of living a double life is the novel’s dominant theme, and it was an experience the writer knew all too well. Upon its publication in 1890 the book was pilloried for its sexual allusions. Wilde promptly revised it.
Some years later, when the writer stood trial in London for gross indecency, the novel was cited as evidence against him. (Wilde was sent to prison and died three years after his release.) Bartlett believes that, even with Wilde’s revisions, the book has always been explicit about its homosexual content.
“There is rather a myth about the book that it’s somehow ambiguous or written in code,” he says. “It’s very clear that Basil Hallward is in love with Dorian. It’s very clear that Dorian has sex with men and with women. It’s very clear that none of it can appease his hunger. He always wants the next thing. He’s never satisfied no matter how hard he looks.
“At the time, and still today, to see those things frankly and realistically portrayed is unusual and exciting. That aspect of the story is very alive and the complexity of Dorian’s social life seems very modern. It’s not that Dorian Gray is discovering his true identity. Dorian’s problem is that he discovers that there is no such thing as a true identity.”
Canton agrees. “Wilde was quoted as saying that the three main characters — Dorian, Lord Henry, and Basil — were each like a slice of himself,” he says. “I have always thought that The Picture of Dorian Gray is like seeing his soul in paper form. Wilde the man is encapsulated somehow within this text.”
Bringing Wilde’s story home to Dublin is a special thrill for Canton, whose father is a Dubliner who settled in London during the 1980s.
Meanwhile, Bartlett believes that Wilde’s Irishness underscored his writing at even the most subtle level. “There’s a lot of Irish in the rhythms and the distinctive cadence and music of Wilde’s prose and dialogue,” he says. “People always think that he depicts English high society, and of course that’s where he spent his adult life and built his career, but something underneath that, to my ear, is very Irish.”
* The Picture of Dorian Gray opens at the Abbey on Oct 2
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