Review: Matthew Bourne's Dorian Gray ***
Matthew Bourne comes in for a bit of stick from the dance world. The choreographer is, horror of horrors, "a bit popular" as far as aficionados are concerned.
Not quite the Andrew Lloyd Webber of the dance world, Bourne's work is still very accessible. Usually. His re-telling of the Oscar Wilde tale The Picture of Dorian Gray is somehow different to his previous work.
Bourne is famous for his all- male Swan Lake, Car Man (an adaptation of Bizet's Carmen) and most recently his stunning Edward Scissorhands. That he has called his latest production Matthew Bourne's Dorian Gray, completely ignoring a vital part of Wilde's original title The Picture of Dorian Gray, signals early on that this can really only claim the title of "loosely based on" Wilde's story. Shifting the action to the modern day, Dorian becomes the face and body of an aftershave advertising campaign, his image ubiquitous and his rise to fame over-night.
If you know the novel, you may well find yourself at a loss while watching the action. That complication aside, thoughts turn to the actual staging of the story.
One of the aspects of Bourne's work that makes it so popular is his extraordinary cinematic vision. The images he conjures on to the stage can be truly beautiful. On this occasion, however, there is not always depth behind the beauty.
Richard Winsor's muscular and energetic dancing in the lead role is always mesmerising but Bourne appears to have cast away so much of Wilde's original story that there is often not enough depth or dramatic impulse driving the narrative.
Bradford Alhambra
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