Theater Reviews + Features | Pittsburgh City Paper: Rage of the Stage Players' The Picture of Dorian Gray, adapted from Oscar Wilde's novel by writer/director James Michael Shoberg, is a largely attractive play about largely attractive people doing profoundly ugly things, much like high school. Like high school, it also goes on a little too long.
This is a play about boundless hedonism, written, perhaps appropriately, with no concept of self-denial. The show is three-and-a-half hours, and even at that length, in many scenes, actors are forced to speak at a mile a minute, giving the audience no chance to digest what is allegedly tremendously witty.
1 comment:
I really enjoyed the book, and I am rather curious about this play. I assume the repetition and long amounts of dialogue are to ensure the audience who hasn't read the book can catch on quickly enough. But I don't think that should be necessary; stories don't need to explain every bit of back story and history before telling it to an audience. Of course, the viewers shouldn't be lost but they also don't need to be coddled into being forced to understand what's going on.
"A good adaptation makes a story work with the peculiarities of its new medium. In theater, the entire draw is actors portraying the millions of tiny things that define a character, even non-verbally."
I find this incredibly true, especially since the audience for each medium will be different. Personally, I think the emphasis of a theatrical piece can be conveyed in silence, or in the subtlety of the lack of language. So I'm still curious about this play, but a little saddened by the suggestions of this review.
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