Dorian: The Musical at Southwark Playhouse Borough – review

If fabulous cheekbones and an unrestrained use of guy-liner were the sole ingredients for theatrical success, then this musicalisation of the Oscar Wilde story of vanity and hubris would be an unabashed triumph. As it is, Dorian: The Musical feels very much like a work-in-progress, albeit one that doesn’t take itself too seriously and intelligently riffs on a well-known tale that has already been seen once on a London stage this year, in the phenomenally successful multimedia adaptation with Sarah Snook at the Haymarket.

Book writer and director Linnie Reedman turns Dorian Gray (impressive Alfie Friedman, looking like a cross between a cherub, Harry Styles, and Mick Jagger in the cult film Performance) into a budding rockstar who falls into the Mephistophelean grip of music promoter Harry Wotton (George Renshaw, terrific). Dorian believes his own hype and turns into an egotistical monster, living a life of debauchery while never ageing a day as those that fall under his spell fall fatally by the wayside.

The bare-bones story has a campy, operatic excess that translates well into a musical setting, especially given that Reedman’s production has a decent grasp of when to hold back and when to go for all-out melodrama. Like the book, Joe Evans’s score needs some judicious pruning – it could happily lose a couple of numbers from each act – but it’s a persuasive, portentous, darkly rollicking amalgam of glam rock and Jacques Brel-like world-weary sophistication, with a bit of ska and Pet Shop Boys (at their least dance-happy) thrown in for good measure. The voices are refreshingly not of a typical “musical theatre” style and timbre, and Aaron Clingham’s band, constantly visible at the back of the set, creates some real grungy magic.

Friedman still needs to find his feet as an actor but credibly puts over Dorian’s contradictory mixture of self-doubt and arrogance while Renshaw invests Wotton with a compelling, smooth swagger that evaporates progressively and convincingly as the story wears on. As his increasingly disillusioned wife, Gabriella Lewis-Dodson is a magnetic fusion of elegance and brittle despair, and has a raw, exciting voice. Megan Hill brings wildness, sensitivity and a smoky, vibrant belt of a voice to the ill-fated Sibyl Vane who dies in thrall to Gray.

The script seamlessly incorporates actual Wilde quotes (“the only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it” etc.) into the modern setting, and the shabby chic aesthetic (set by Isabella Van Braeckel) has a timeless quality that feels appropriate. Van Braeckel’s costumes are gorgeous, elegant and quirky as they mix up fashions and time periods, and feel entirely right for a story set in a milieu where style is eternally prized over substance. Reedman’s staging is more adequate than inspired, and occasionally downright clumsy, while Adam King’s lighting design successfully conjures up a twilight world of louche clubs and drinking dens but sometimes feels frustratingly non-specific so that it’s not always clear where and what we should be looking at.

Dorian: The Musical is a couple of drafts away from being a really good show: the storytelling is haphazard and the production is neither as opulent nor as focused as it really needs to be. But not for the first time this year (the other example being the Korean Marie Curie tuner at Charing Cross) has a new musical that looked pretty ropey on paper turned out to be surprisingly watchable and engaging. In the words of one of the characters: “I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m gonna roll with it”.