To live life like art, with every experience meant to shock, please and entertain, can seem alluring to college students. It would mean constant parties, drugs, sex — anything and everything to stimulate and please. The main character in Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray” lives in this way, believing “to stop art is to stop living.”
Under the direction of Blake Robison, The Round House Theatre in Bethesda, Md., is putting on the world premiere of a modern rendition of “The Picture of Dorian Gray” by Roberto Aguirre Sacasa. Like Sacasa’s Emmy-nominated television series “Big Love,” the play is dark and shocking, containing adult situations and nudity that border on scandalous.
The stage is set in 1988 and progresses into the 2000s, accompanied with leather jackets, ripped jeans and pointed leather boots.
Sacasa uses the modern backdrop to amplify the key themes from the novel, especially the struggle for eternal beauty. The theme is too obviously spelled out when Dorian, played by Roderick Hill, speaks with more inflection in his voice as he views a painting that represents his youth and soul. This painting haunts both the audience and Dorian as it changes, absorbing Dorian’s immoral and evil behaviors.
By the end of the play, it is the picture that resonates; perhaps just the painting alone has this effect, or perhaps the scenes around it are so chilling that the painting embodies these actions.
The acting is over-the-top throughout the entire play but does not take away from its integrity. The strongest actor, Sean Dugan, plays Dorian’s confidant, Harry Wotton. Several times throughout each scene, one of the actors engages the audience with a monologue. Dugan was one of the only actors to make a smooth transition from dialogue to monologue. The character Harry Wotton a adds much-needed comedic relief to an otherwise chilling play with his clever language, pop culture references and frankness.
The oddest parts of the play are the scenes in which Dorian engages in heavy drug use, while songs from the time period like “How Soon Now” by The Smiths and “Lose Yourself” by Eminem boom in the background. Such scenes are quite awkward and simply do not fit with how well the modern tweaks to the novel are incorporated.
The fact that Sacasa, a former D.C. resident, writes in several mediums — including comics — is reflected in the play. Dorian explores all forms of art that in any way fit the broad definition of pleasing the senses, especially through modern mediums like film and even sex. The warnings on the play’s Web site about adult content and nudity are very necessary; there is one point were the lead exposes his entire stoic body for about 10 minutes.
The way the classic novel “The Picture of Dorian Gray” is adapted to the modern world is masterfully done. It lends itself well to the college audience because it is about four young men each representing a certain clique character: the caveman, the pretty boy, the artist and the intellectual. They engage in life like it is art, but none are as strongly connected as Dorian, who is the embodiment of beauty. He does not change like everyone else; he lives life with increasing raucousness that is, at times, hard to watch. He claims “the highest of all duties is the duty one owes to one’s self. The only truth is ... the truth of the self.” This theme that individuals create their own truth resonates throughout the play. Therefore, only you can interpret whether you like the play and will have to see it for yourself. When you do, keep in mind that the ending is so graphic, shocking and sudden that most of the audience could not even get out of their seat for the standing ovation.
The world premiere of Sacasa’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray” will be at the Round House Theater in Bethesda, Md., from Sept. 9 to Oct. 4. Tickets are specially priced at $10 to $15 for audience members under age 30.
You can reach this writer at thescene@theeagleonline.com.
