Dorian Gray (Bourne) People you wouldn’t look at suddenly become fascinating." "Dorian Gray"'s run at the Edinburgh International Festival sold over 11,000 tickets, making it the biggest selling dance event in the festival's history. Reviewers have generally praised the imaginative choreography, costume changes and staging. Dorian Gray (Bourne) Matthew Bourne's "Dorian Gray" is a contemporary dance adaptation of Oscar Wilde's novel, "The Picture of Dorian Gray", by choreographer Matthew Bourne. The show made its debut in August 2008 at the Edinburgh International Festival and transferred to Sadler's Wells Theatre in London in September 2008. The music was composed by Terry Davies for a
The Picture of Dorian Gray theme in "The Picture of Dorian Gray" (1891) is aestheticism and its conceptual relation to living a double life. Throughout the story, the narrative presents aestheticism as an absurd abstraction, which disillusions more than it dignifies the concept of Beauty. Despite Dorian being a hedonist, when Basil accuses him of making a "by-word" of the name of Lord Henry's sister, Dorian curtly replies, "Take care, Basil. You go too far ..."; thus, in Victorian society, public image and social standing do matter to Dorian. Yet, Wilde highlights the protagonist's hedonism: Dorian enjoyed "keenly the terrible pleasure of a double life",