STREAMING: 6*' 2+%674' 1(| DORIAN GRAY.
(Barn Theatre online)
Covid lockdown took us into stars’ homes for interviews, gave us talking heads lined up in banks of screens, and showed us group Zooms of casts doing table reads of scripts. These got boring very quickly, highlighting how uncreative many creatives were. Creativity itself was in lockdown.
Now, along comes this updated, re-imagined, re-invented version of Oscar Wilde’s timeless The Picture Of Dorian Gray by The Barn Theatre and four other British regional theatres. Suddenly it’s clear what should’ve been clear at the start of covid: instead of being nobbled by the new norm, producers should’ve grabbed the chance to break the rules like never before.
And that’s what they’ve done here with some great actors.
The plot is well known: a young, beautiful man does a deal with the Devil to stay eternally youthful while pursuing his indulgent, hedonistic lifestyle. He never ages, but his oil portrait, hidden upstairs in the attic, does.
The homoeroticism was toned down before the book’s publication but is still present. It’s been turned up in this covid revision. Young, gay and lusty social-media influencer Dorian (Fionn Whitehead from Dunkirk, The Children Act, Queers) develops the NewLeaf filter that projects a perfect self-image to the world, hiding his facial scarring and deteriorating mental health due to a life lived beyond the full.
There’s plenty of pure Wilde in the script:
“Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing,” he says.
The story is told as a documentary via texts, video calls, phones, iPads and desktops. Zoom and Skype take us right into the actors’ faces as streamed theatre never could, and video pans and wide shots expand the action as covid YouTube never even tried.
A beautiful, young man does a deal with the Devil to stay eternally youthful….
The producers have grabbed the chance to break the rules like never before… with some great actors.
Joanna Lumley stands out as Lady Narborough: “A man’s face is a work of biography, a woman’s face is a work of fiction.” Alfred Enoch is sensual, lascivious Harry Wotton, with a wonderful jacket. There’s too little of Russell Tovey and Stephen Fry as, respectively, software whiz Basil and the host whose questions hold it all together.
This is certainly one of the very best shades of Gray.
Streaming times updated at pictureofdoriangray.com. (M16+, 94 mins)
ALEX STANGELOVE (Netflix)
Another lovely story about a high schooler finding his sexual identity. Though not as good as Love, Victor (season 2 starts soon), it’s endearing, there’s sharp dialogue, and it’s funny. Practicing sexy talk with a stuffed toy is a particular good scene.
Daniel Doheny plays Alex Truelove, class nerd, class president, and class virgin. Losing his virginity won’t be easy. His loveable girlfriend, Claire is ready but come crunch-time Alex has to think of his equally loveable mate, Elliott to get hard.
Love and sex are not so clear-cut these days. Says Alex: “Everywhere you look, someone’s omnisexual or polyamorous or genderqueer or transitioning into God knows what.”
He finally admits, “There’s this guy who has a crush on me and I guess I’m not repulsed by the idea.”
His girlfriend is onto something when she says, “Teenage boys suck.” Her mum agrees: “That, they do!” It’s dripping with something, let’s call it sarcasm.
The male characters are well written, however, the female characters are more like props for the boys on the road to true love. The writing also clearly signposts exactly where it’s going so there are no surprises but it’s an enjoyable ride. Produced by Ben Stiller. (MA15+, 99 mins)
SUPER DRAGS (Season one, Netflix)
This Brazilian cartoon is outrageously camp with its head and its heart in the right place.
By day, Patrick, Donizete and Ralph work in a department store. At 5pm, they transform into drag queen superheroes Lemon Chifon, Scarlet Carmesim and Safira Cyan to help protect all the queers from homophobia – and there’s a lot of that in Belt Buckle Bay.
The show must be doing something right because it drew the ire of conservative groups in Brazil and the US.
The wit is both high and low, with all the right references (“as old as time and Liza”), and plenty of double entendre. It’s partial animation like The Flintstones and it’s fast – you’ll have trouble skimming the subtitles and keeping up with the sight gags, like the phallus-shaped vacuum cleaner, the Dild-O.
The English-language version is voiced by Drag Race’s Trixie Mattel,
Ginger Minj, Willam and Shangela.
“Boner appetit, bitches!” (MA15+, 5 eps)
EVERYTHING’S GONNA BE OKAY (Season two, Stan)
Well… so-so, at least. Season two of Josh Thomas’ interesting show, made in the US, is not as ground-breaking as the first. Initial episodes are more of the same but lack the sparkle and wit of series one.
The real problem is that, at 34, Josh is too knowing to play a naive and “neurotic twenty-something-year-old” as the show’s notes describe. It’d be much more interesting, and credible if his character was in his thirties and dealing with the problems of his two inherited teenage half-sisters, one of whom is on the Asperger’s spectrum, and his boyfriend (Adam Faison), who is also clearly in his thirties.
The season picks up after the group’s heartbreaking trip to New York City at the end of last season, which was intended to explore tertiary education options for one of the girls but sort of fizzled. Now everyone is rethinking their life goals and not coming up with anything inspiring.
Genevieve, at least, is considering going on dates and Thomas’ character, as ever, is failing to balance the demands of his young charges, his boyfriend and paying the bills in a foreign country. It succeeds on Thomas’ considerable likeability. (S02 10 eps, also S01 10 eps)
CODEBREAKER: THE ALAN TURING STORY (DocPlay)
Alan Turing’s story was told in The Imitation Game (2014), which enthralled and outraged. This superb documentary, starring Ed Stoppard, pieces together details of his life in even greater nuance, bringing his genius and his tragedy to the fore.
In 1945, Turing built a “universal machine” that could solve any mathematical calculation simply by shuffling ones and zeros. It was the first computer and the result of machines he’d developed to crack the German’s Enigma code, helping win World War II for the Allies.
This film explores his personal life more deeply, which makes the end all the more devastating. Interviews with family and friends, readings of his diaries and school reports bring to light details such as his teen crush on Christopher Morcom and its innocent intimacy. Alan was shattered when Morcom was suddenly killed, never fully recovering. Scientists and friends believe his love for Morcom inspired his work.
His homosexuality, illegal at the time, was explored in Manchester’s beats. He struggled to maintain a straight public facade, even proposing to fellow mathematician, Joan Clarke (played by Keira Knightley in the 2104 movie), admitting to her he liked men.
Joan recalls: “Naturally, it worried me because it was almost certainly permanent.”
When he was robbed by some trade he’d brought home, Turing reported it to the police – who promptly arrested Turing because having a man in his house was assumed “gross indecency”. Turing confessed to “mutual masturbation, 69 and genital friction”.
He won WWII, he was the father of AI, his work led to the digital age, and the device in your hands is due to him. The British government repaid him by chemically castrating him. He died at 41, of probable suicide, in ignominy and shame. (PG, 81 mins)