Edinburgh International Festival 8th-31st August 2008

‘Demolishing conventions, bestriding art forms from ballet to musical comedy to film, Bourne's work isn't just high-brow or low-brow. It's all-brow.'

- Time Magazine

‘Matthew Bourne is the undisputed king of dance theatre.'

- The Observer

‘Probably the world's most successful choreographer.'

- The New Yorker

'Wilde and wild in all the most brilliantly telling ways.'

- The Herald on Matthew Bourne's Dorian Gray at Festival 08

The world premiere of Matthew Bourne's Dorian Gray seems to pose a simple question: is celebrity killing us?

Concerning itself entirely with "our" celebrity obsession, Dorian becomes a model for a high-profile perfume brand, surrounded by sycophants, the paparazzi, nad yes-men. The tragedy of the play translates brilliantly, if a little simplistically, to "modern" times and Dorian becomes - in keeping with the Faustian themes of the original - a narcissistic, dangerous and not altogether likeable man.

Dressed fast and loose in Ray-Bans and glamour, occasionally the coherence of the show becomes garbled, with almost too much going on to focus upon. However, this also seems to reflect nicely the fast-paced and fragmentary lives we lead, and the choreography is often revelatory, especially in the later ensemble sequences, using the uncannily clever set design to stunning (and frightening) effect.

Is celebrity killing us? Answer: yes. And we are all indicted.

- Dorian Gray review by EIF Critic Alexander Gandar

For his dance adaptation of Oscar Wilde's turn of the century masterwork The Picture of Dorian Gray, Matthew Bourne has pulled out all stops. On a beautifully minimalistic revolving stage Bourne unleashes a gamut of video art, jazz-funk and tighty whities to uncover his post-modern, or rather, nineteen nineties retro vision of the Vodka-drenched inferno of petty jealousies and self obsession called the fashion industry.

With New Adventures dancers as a troupe of mainly male models staring each other down with tormented seduction in a fierce struggle for celebrity, success and sexual satisfaction, and willfully employing less subtlety than Wilde did for his Gothic classic, Bourne effectively recreates a world where people do not turn old for fear of being replaced but, at the same time, do not grow any wiser or deeper either.

- EIF Critic Max Ribitzsky

 ‘no-one is better at finding ways to re-imagine old stories in new dance.'

- Matthew Bourne's Dorian Gray review by The Daily Telegraph