The play “The Portrait of Dorian Gray” of the Racho Stoyanov Drama Theater in Gabrovo caused an explosion of applause when it visited the National Theater in Sofia on April 17. The audience was on its feet and called the actors five times to bow on stage.
I entered the great hall of the theater with a dose of skepticism. I have read the novel several times. Every second sentence of Wilde is a food for thought – a quote, a deep and beautiful thought from those floating around the Internet. His language is pretentious and must have made more than one translator sweat.
How do you make a play on such a text? How is all the emotion that such a book evokes in the reader conveyed within a few hours? How is it possible to give answers to existential and universal human questions such as whether man has a soul in a play.
What it means to really live and not just exist. What is temptation really, should we give in to it? How far do the privileges of beauty and youth extend?
And most importantly, how do you tell a story with the means of theater, at the center of which is fine art?
The creative team of the production has an answer to all these questions. I’m talking about the director – Veselka Kuncheva, who is also one of the authors of the play along with Polina Hristova, the artist – Marieta Golomehova, the composer – Milen Apostolov, the choreographer – Yavor Kunchev and the sound designer – Georgi Atanasov. These people undoubtedly know how.
In days when criticism has become an uncritical pet of cultural institutions, spewing praise where it should and should not, it is very difficult to convince the audience that there is art that is really worthwhile.
However, I don’t need to convince those 779 people with whom we filled the large hall of the Ivan Vazov National Theater on April 17 and vibrated to the frequency of “Portrait of Dorian Gray”.
What happened on stage was massive, spectacular and fascinating. Art came to life in the studio of Basil Hallward (Dimo Dimov), and the glow of inspiration materialized. High society, the so-called elite, and its false values, forgotten soul and overwhelming need to satisfy the flesh was best exemplified by almost the entire cast of the Gabrovo Theater. Especially when Egyptian sounds spilled across the stage.
Two guest actors – Blagovest Mitsev and Tsveti Peniashki – played the main roles of Dorian Gray and Sir Henry Wotton. With a magnificent game, the two managed to undress a pure human soul, make it fall in love with life, pollute it, and finally – tear it apart. We have lived through it all and experienced the full range of emotions between life and death: love, inspiration, vitality, shame, anguish and remorse.
And through the dialogues of the husbands Henry and Victoria (Tanya Yorgova) Wotton came the good humor. The jokes about marriage and relationship problems of long-term spouses were funny without being cheesy, homophobic or sexist – a forgotten recipe for good taste in the funny. The audience laughed heartily, and the rest of the time was quiet and absorbed by the plot and the acting of the actors. Even the phones remained silent…
Photos: Alexander Bogdan Thompson/ Drama Theater “Racho Stoyanov” Gabrovo
