Eryn Jean Norvill was ready for her close-up, pursued not by a bear but by a phalanx of film cameras in STC Artistic Director Kip Williams’ five-star reimagining of The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde’s bonfire of vanity horror novel-turned-stage play. So successful was this fusion of art forms that Williams deployed the tactic again with last year’s Ewen Leslie and Matthew Backer-led Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
The New Romantic era, unfurling at a time when the damage humanity was doing to our planet was becoming much clearer in the public consciousness, had a certain sort of nihilistic joy in its extravagance, as harnessed by Lé Nør. ‘The world is f***ed, so let’s make ourselves look fantastic and have a party, that kind of defiance and endurance of the human spirit,’ Watts says.
