BWW Preview: Dorian Gray Opens at the Overtime This Weekend

Derek Berlin, who won an ATAC Globe award for his performance in the title role of the musical Nosferatu at PASA in June last year, is opening his one-man show on Dorian Gray (adapted from Oscar Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray") at the Overtime Theatre this coming weekend. To reserve seats, call the theatre on (210) 557-7562). The show runs for two weekends.

"The Picture of Dorian Gray" is one of Oscar Wilde's most famous works. It was cited at his trial as evidence of his "gross indecency".

A dour Scottish critic described it thus: "The Picture of Dorian Gray" is obviously the work of a moral degenerate of the lowest ilk. It is heavy with the mephitic odors of moral and spiritual putrefaction. It is effeminate, unmanly, leprous and full of esoteric prurience, aimed at perverted telegraph boys and the outlawed aristocrats who were so recently exposed in the Cleveland Street scandal as having frequented a brothel where boys were paid for sex. I think the author should be prosecuted under the 1885 Criminal Amendment Act for gross indecency and for attempting to corrupt the morals of the more impressionable and easily led members of society."

Modern readers, however, have generally come to take a different view of the novel, regarding it as a moralistic work that points out the dangers of vanity and excess.

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