Oscar Wilde’s 19th-century demi-monde is swapped for Hoxton hipsters in this new, updated version of the story of Dorian Gray. He becomes she (played by Kate Kennedy) and the picture in the attic becomes an iPad image originally snapped as a profile picture by Basil, whose business is Photoshopping images of his trust-fund pals. Only Dorian’s picture emerges as complete perfection requiring no touch-ups. Soon she is a celebrity famed for doing nothing at all except turning up at cool parties and being photographed.
It’s a neat idea, and there are some nice touches: a monocle version of Google Glass that early adopters, including the decadent Harry, are desperate to have, even though it may blind them; a clever use of 80s music; and a sense of deluded, rich, bright young things riding an Old Street startup bubble and partying towards disaster. Dorian’s soon-to-be-discarded lover, Sybil Vane, is no longer an actor but a singer-songwriter who achieves fame after death.
Paul Roseby’s production looks good enough in Verity Quinn’s design to disguise the fact that it is sitting on top of the set for Stomp, but as Wilde’s febrile fable proves, looks are not everything. The trouble with both production and Brad Birch’s script is that, in depicting a shallow and vacuous world, they fall into the trap of becoming shallow and vacuous themselves. Instead of dissecting our culture’s obsession with celebrity, looks and posh kids, it merely showcases this unlovely world of strutting peacocks. It’s a bad case of style over substance and becomes increasingly muddled in the second half.
Kennedy, who has a touch of the young Natasha Richardson about her, is striking and watchable, and Ellie Bryans seizes her chances as the doomed Sybil. But once again this NYT Rep company at the start of their careers are let down by mediocre material.
• To 26 November. Box office: 08448 112334. Venue: Ambassadors, London.
