CHRIS THURMAN: Satirising vanity beautifully is UJ’s staging of The Picture of Dorian Gray
To what extent do we project what we seek to deny about ourselves onto hateful images that can absorb our (self-)loathing?
News that the University of Johannesburg’s Arts and Culture division is staging Neil Bartlett’s theatrical version of The Picture of Dorian Gray took me back to Oscar Wilde’s novel, which I read many years ago. The text, first published in 1891, is one of the prescribed literary options for learners writing grade 12 English Home Language for the National Senior Certificate.
School syllabuses veer towards the staid and canonical, but though Dorian Gray appears to tick those boxes it is also darkly comical, a gothic horror story that exposes the viciousness of the British class system and satirises vanity. The tale of a man who effectively sells his soul in return for the appearance of eternal youth and beauty — while his portrait, hidden in an attic, “ages” and absorbs his corruption — remains refreshingly (perhaps depressingly) pertinent...
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