Wonderland Theatre ©2003-2009
Wonderland Productions proudly presents

The Picture of Dorian Gray
High Tea and Cakes with Oscar

By Nikki Walsh the

Cucumber sandwiches, warm buttered scones and steaming pots of tea are just some of the treats you can expect to be served at Wonderland Production’s latest show, a reading of The Picture of Dorian Gray. One of the many performances that will be held in Dublin as part of the ‘One City, One Book’ project, the show is more an imaginative re-enactment of the book than a reading, something Wonderland’s founder and artistic director Alice Coghlan likes to call “a play with a narrative”.“We are asking the audience to imagine everything with us” says Alice.

Taking the book to the stage, or rather the James Joyce Tea Rooms of Bewley’s, has been the biggest challenge of the production. “Wilde wrote the book as a young man and it is overwritten; there are a lot of repetitions. We are cleaning that up, getting to the point. The actors only speak Wilde’s words and it feels as if they are passing the narrative back and forth. It’s good for the book.”

Of course it doesn’t get more Wildean than afternoon tea, and its ceremony – not to mention the sense of theatre- has been incorporated in to the show, with the actors helping themselves to the odd cuppa as they tell each other, and the audience, the story.
Alice has taken her menu very seriously with promises of towering cake stands, mini croissants and calorific buns. “It captures the hedonistic spirit of the book perfectly,” she says. “It allows us to do what Wilde did – play with his audience. They think they are indulging in the niceties, the formalities of afternoon tea, and then we hit them with a story that, despite its obsession with surfaces and masks, has a dark underbelly.”

Presenting a double bill of food and theatre is something the Wonderland are good at. In 2008, their lunchtime opera at Bewley’s Café Theatre was a big hit with Dublin audiences while, more recently, their translation of the obscure restoration comedy La Locandiera, was served up alongside a four-course tapas menu, re-introducing Irish audience to the concept of dinner theatre.
It’s a refreshing approach that Alice likes to describe as “interactive theatre” and which has, over the last seven years, resulted in a wide range of shows, from cheeky musicals to French comedies in site specific locations. ”Our first show was a comedy ghost show in a pub” says Alice. “Actors were crawling through audiences chairs.”

Its not for the fainthearted. Ask Alice about the company’s near disasters and she is happy to list, with the amusment of a seasoned pro – missing cutlery, flaming plates of food and boisterous audiences are all hazards of the job. But engaging with audiences makes for great banter and some memorable one-liners. “In La Locandiera one of our actors asks the audience for advice as to whether he should marry. Someone shouted, ‘Only with a pre-nup!”

At a time when most theatre companies are reeling from budget cuts, Wonderland looks set to capitalise on years of hard graft and creativity. “We never got any funding,” says Alice, “so we are used to fending for ourselves. Passion has been the only think we have had to incentivise our projects and that has been no bad thing,. Money has and will always be a problem, but by being independent we have also had the freedom to do what we want.”
This freedom, and passion, has resulted in a number of successes, including Life: Shop Till You Drop, a one-woman, one act play that Alice first wrote and directed in 2007, now on its fifth international tour. Next came a production of Brendan Behan’s The Hostage, staged in the birthplace of Padraig Pearse, which opened to rave reviews last year. La Locandiera meanwhile goes to the Edinburgh Fringe this year.

Now firmly installed as artists in residence at the Mermaid Arts Centre in Bray, where they have received a lot of support from local audiences, Coghlan’s vision for the future is clear. “We’ve always tended to be ambitious and now its time to raise the bar. This year seems to have been about the classics but next year I would like us to return to opera and also to experiment with new writing.

Until then its back to rehearsals. With actors Michael James Ford, Simon Coury and Michael Winder all veterans of the Gate and no strangers to Wilde’s work, heading the line-up, it will be interesting to see what Dubliners make of the place Wonderland will create beyond the private imaginations of the reader and within the public space of the theatre, served with tea and lashings of Wildean wit.

The Picture of Dorian Gray takes place in the James Joyce Tearoom at Bewley’s of Grafton St from April 13 to May 1 at 4.30pm. Booking can be made on 0818 205 205 or online at www.ctb.ie


Taken from the Irish Independent, Weekend Review, Saturday 10th April 2010


Production Index     Production Reviews
Arts News, Lyric FM: A feature on the One City One Book Festival, including an excerpt from our production of Dorian Gray. Listen to the Podcast

Artbeat, Dublin City FM: An interveiw with director Alice Coghlan on The Picture of Dorian Gray. Listen to the Podcast
Credits
From Wonderland Productions Ltd.
Starring: Michael Winder, Simon Coury and Michael James Ford

Direction: Alice Coghlan
Costume Design: Tara Jones Hamilton
Producer: Sara Cregan
Assistant Director: Annabella Forbes
Stage Management: Jean Hally
Props: Eve Parnell
Sound Design: Alun Smyth
Photography: Stephen Delaney