Dorian Gray Naked - A New Musical

Photo by Clare Hawley

Popinjay Productions presents DORIAN GRAY NAKED - A New Musical. Libretto by Melvyn Morrow. Music by Dion Condack, at the LIMELIGHT ON OXFORD, 231 Oxford St Darlinghurst. 30 January - 16 February.

DORIAN GRAY NAKED, is a new Musical work by Melvyn Morrow and Dion Condack with and for Blake Appelqvist.

The novel of THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY, by Oscar Wilde, first appeared in 1891, after a scandalous debut in a magazine LIPPINCOTT'S in the previous year. It combines philosophical, gothic and gay themes under the guise of a romance. Dorian is a man of great beauty and having his portrait painted by a 'devoted' artist wishes that the painting would grow old while he would stay perpetually young. The wish is granted. He stays youthful while those about him age and the predicament of social exposure causes Dorian to live a double life: He is able to live in the world of influence whilst exploring the underworld of crime, sex and drugs. -a Jekyll and Hyde, variation. It has become a novel that has gained in status as time has passed and the moral sensibilities of the general public changed (matured?). In response to the virulent critique of the time, Oscar Wilde wrote a preface to the book form where Wilde proclaimed his gospel of art for arts sake, it becoming his literary and artistic manifesto.

Oscar Wilde, the creator and mortal, died in 1900. Dorian Gray, the creation has become immortal and still lives every time his story is read. In a letter Wilde wrote of the principal characters of the novel:

Basil (Halllward - the portrait painter) is what I think I am. Lord Henry (Wooton - the aristocratic mentor) is who the world thinks I am. Dorian is what I would like to be ...

To reveal art and conceal the art is art's aim

The writer is dead, but the novel lives, Dorian lives, and it is his chance to release himself without the editing of the writer, and show Dorian Gray naked, and present a disquisition on the disguises of Oscar as represented in this book. The art of the novel concealing the writer which is the aim of Oscar's art - all art, he believes is a reveal of the self. This Dorian just wishes to tell all. It is a heady and sometimes 'academic' detour into the novel (and I wonder if acquaintance with the book is a necessary requirement to enjoy DORIAN GRAY NAKED fully), and sometimes treads too long in a static place, but for all that, is a puzzlement worth wrestling with, particularly as the hero of this conversation is owned by a devastatingly handsome and intelligent performer, Blake Apppelqvist.

He has an ascetic presence that Oscar may have admired and certainly an accompanying grace of movement, that in the limiting cabaret space on the second floor of this new venue LIMELIGHT, strikes one with its physical beauty that tantalises with its swift changes from the high camp to the glorious natural (Choreographer, Nathan Mark Wright). He has, as well, a secure and beautiful range of voice and an ability to deliver the words with impinging clarity. The Musical Composition is by Dion Codrack, who also performs at the piano and verbally sings as an alter ego to Dorian. The score has its charms: PARTY, POSING, EROTOMANIA. The Director Melvyn Morrow with his two co-creators/artists are sure of their material and has guided it with a convicted belief in its moment to moment communication. (I am not as convicted.)

This is an 85 minute excursion into the novel of Oscar Wilde which has a father and son urging and the expression of the need to love as its central premise.

I enjoyed this new Australian work more than he highly praised HERRINGBONE, but then I might just be perverse. See for yourself. I found it, relatively, opaque but still arresting for all its difficulties.