This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
ED2012 3/5 Reviews ED2012 Theatre Reviews
The Picture Of Dorian Gray (Pregnant Fish Theatre Company / PBH’s Free Fringe)
By Lia Sanders | Published on Friday 31 August 2012
It is a rich irony that a show about culture and beauty is performed in such a horrible venue, an abandoned shop stinking of fast food. Although their performance ensures we forget this, Pregnant Fish Theatre Company have set themselves an even harder task: a new musical version of Wilde’s novel with no stage. Cleverly they employ a mirror for the painting, and use the actors all the time, including as scenery and narrators. It’s all quite impressive, though some of the cast deliver excessively caricatured performances, which at times results in a loss of both tragedy and wit. The songs, meanwhile, are good musical numbers, but some of the solos and duets seem a little weak. Maybe the problem here is that too many things are being forced together – stale chips and Wilde arguably complement each other as well as ensemble numbers and languid wit.
Princes Mall, 19-25 Aug, 6.00pm.
tw rating 3/5 | [Lia Sanders]