GOTHIC plays are not much in vogue as the West End, like Broadway, is submerged in a wave of musicals.
Perhaps Phantom of the Opera or The Woman in Black are the nearest it comes.
At the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford, this week, Oscar Wilde's Faustian Dorian Gray fills the stage with its gothic imagery and sepulchral voice.
With a reputation for aphorisms, Wilde's dabbling with the darker side of life is all the more telling both in his Ballad of Reading Gaol and here in Dorian Gray.
The idea of a picture ageing in the attic as a young man remains ever youthful has become something of a lighthearted joke in common parlance.
However, this play by Trevor Baxter, based on Wilde's novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, has a macabre feel with sounding gongs and ominous drums.
The production, framed quite literally by dark, forbidding picture shapes, echoes nightmarishly as Dorian lingers too long in the opium den and makes his rakish progress through an ageless life.
As self-indulgence piles on self-indulgence and morality is barely thought of, let alone considered, youth loses its fresh charm.
As much a victim of his beauty as his unfortunate victims, Dorian (Benedick Bates) has an air of a tortured Richard Burton as he laments his weakness and his power.
A young actor who has inherited and expanded the talent and presence of his father Alan Bates, Benedick has the looks to give credence to Dorian's pulling power and the depth to engage a modicum of sympathy for his plight from the audience.
Lord Henry Wotton (Alan Bates) is the urbane tempter who alerts Dorian to the power of his beauty and the cynical channel to a life filled with shallow conquest and violence.
The women in Dorian's life fare as badly as the smitten men. Sarah Walton is the doomed actress, Sybil, and Rupert Frazer is the enamoured painter whose portrait is the catalyst for tragedy.
Wilde wouldn't be Wilde without the pithy phrase and a fair few fall to Alan Bates and to Margaret Tyzack in all three of her personae.
With much doubling up of the cast, an element of confusion does creep into the production at times.
However, Margaret Tyzack gets the most laughs in all three roles. The humour sits somewhat oddly in the midst of this miasma of self-indulgence. It is as if the revered Oscar is straining to amuse while his mind is on other things.
There is much talk of the purpose and soul of art. Indeed, the portrait allows Dorian to "live a life of evil and corruption quite unchecked".
Less suited to a hot summer night than a gloomy November one, the production at times hangs heavily in the humid air.
Despite the sparks of cynical humour (and there are many), and the fine performances, it is at times an enervating piece.
Quite a few portraits are beginning to curl at the edges in attics as the curtain falls on this tale of beauty gone sour.
p Dorian Gray runs at the Arnaud until tomorrow (Saturday).
Sandy Baker