When: Through Oct. 4
Where: Round House Theatre, 4545 East-West Highway, Bethesda
Details: $25 to $60; various discounts may apply; nudity, sexual/adult situations; 240-644-1100; roundhousetheatre.org
The first thing you need to understand is “The Picture of Dorian Gray” onstage at the Round House Theatre in Bethesda is nothing if not explicit.
Oscar Wilde’s tale of a handsome young man whose portrait grows to depict the ravages of his depravity while his person remains unsullied is told with nary a violent, sexual or profane stone left unturned.
The world premiere of Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa’s reinterpretation of the classic is set in London, Europe and Los Angeles between 1988 and the present. Roderick Hill, who has performed in numerous Broadway and off-Broadway productions, realistically portrays the dapper, egotistical and maniacal title character. One of his finest scenes is when Gray transforms from the sweetly lovesick to the hideously brutal fiance of young actress Sibyl Vane, who puts all of her trust into him only to become his first psychological torture victim.
From that tumultuous breakup scene — in which both characters are for a time fully nude — Gray’s slide into debauchery begins, and he notices the portrait friend Basil Hallwood painted of him begins to show the telltale facial signs of his sins.
Like an amoral wild child left unattended, Gray chooses to experiment with every vice — drink, drugs, sexual debauchery, murder, torture — that he fancies.
The story continues with Gray writing a novel about his debauchery, appearing on a television show “Good Day LA,” and he begins to seek financing to turn the treatment into a movie.
It’s not long before the story’s classic ending that shows Gray slicing the portrait — now hideously portraying an evil, old man — to pieces. Early in the play, Gray said that to slice it to pieces would be tantamount to murder. Sure enough, the destruction of the painting not only returns its image to the original, but marks Gray’s face and body with the ravages of time and his sins.
Certainly updating a classic work of literature — thrusting it into modern times — is a creative marvel. Round House is to be applauded for that attempt.
The sorrow is that this production is filled with gratuitous violence, vile language, nudity and crude sexual references that go beyond the story, seeming intended only for shock value. It’s a shame because it not only devalues the original work, but takes away from the production, too.
