Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray on the Guildford stage

Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray lends itself thrillingly to the stage, says Seán Aydon whose new adaptation is on the road.

It plays the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford from Tuesday to Saturday, November 3-7.

“It's a fantastic book but there are many fantastic books that don't particularly work as a drama on stage, but The Picture of Dorian Gray definitely does. Already there is a theatricality in the plot, and the dialogue is excellent. And really you just want something that opens up big ideas for debate without actually giving answers. That's what makes it so interesting.”

It’s a world where charm is currency, morality is negotiable and the truth always exacts its price.

“And what has been so interesting is to be working on something that so many people have an understanding of. Even if they don't know the book, they know that whole idea of a picture in an attic. It's been so interesting working on something that really exists in people's minds outside of the play.”

Jack Crumlin (Lonnie Byers in Stranger Things: The First Shadow and To Kill a Mocking Bird, both West End) is Dorian Gray: “As Seán says, you want to be working on something that is complex. You think of that idea that art should be complex but not complicated, simple but not simplistic. It has a complexity but the themes are still quite clear in this story that is 120 or 130 years old. We still understand its themes.”

One of those is growing old: “That's an element to it but it's a number of other themes as well that come to a head, and one of those is influence, how we are influenced by other people and what effect that influence has in terms of our responsibilities for our actions. Is Dorian responsible for his actions over the course of his life? There is also the concept of youth and consequence. When the idea of consequence is removed, in this case age, then where does responsibility lie? And you've also got that Victorian belief that we wear the sins that we commit etched into our faces.”

As Seán says, it has to be played as a thriller but as a theatrical thriller: “What we are doing is playing with what is real and what is not real. We want to make a piece of theatre that feels like a piece of theatre, not a piece of cinema on stage. We want to play with what reality is. It's really deliberate that our world is murky. Hopefully it feels like a psychological thriller. There is that idea of how we can test characters and what we see. We're playing very much with the idea of refraction and reflection.”

Jack added: “Oscar Wilde himself would have an aversion to moralistic texts so there is that complexity as well but I think the point is that there is so much that the audience can take from it. Oscar Wilde says that the audience don't necessarily need to see the painting because whatever is in their imagination is going to be far worse, and that's the point. The audience is a player in this story. They have a great power in the story as well.”