Scoop Review: Daughters of Heaven & Dorian Gray

Scoop Review: Daughters of Heaven & The Picture Of Dorian Gray - Downstage 3-12 Feb

Review By Sharon Ellis

Book Tickets Daughters of Heaven - The Picture Of Dorian Gray

Long Cloud Youth Theatre’s two plays on alternate nights at Downstage are a big ambitious summer project. The directors are Sophie Roberts and Willem Wassenaar and whether it is deliberate or not, on Sophie’s night the girls star and on Willem’s the boys star.

The story upon which Daughters of Heaven is based is a good choice for a pack of youngsters to do as a play. But the play itself was not so great. There were rather too many grown up parts and they were difficult for these young actors to make believable. The story centres upon two young girls and it had implications for the grandparents of this cast that went way beyond the action of the play. But in this play by Michelanne Forster too much of the focus is on the lawyers and the police.

It may be time for a new play about this ugly event in our past. A play that explores the issues for young people then and now.

The second play The Picture of Dorian Gray was an adaptation created by Long Cloud themselves and the grown-ups were made up to showcase the talents of the players. Ben Crawford as Lord Henry Wotton was convincingly witty and stylish as though Oscar Wilde had conjured him from the Long Cloud itself. Joe Dekkers Reihana was beauty himself as Dorian Gray and Jonathon Power and Michelle Ny supported well.

In the first play Vanessa Cullen as Juliet and Mae Grant as Pauline were chillingly real. But the boys and girls playing barefoot cops and reputable lawyers and professors in skinny jeans will need to grow up and fill out quite a lot before these parts suit their talents. Jess Holly Bates did a remarkable job as Juliet’s mother but Juliet and Pauline were the only perfect parts for this cast and these two did them with gusto and verve.

In both plays the big action scenes with the whole refreshingly large cast on the move sweeping about the stage together are the stuff of Long Cloud. The opening moments when they find their costumes and props and set themselves up, the big cloth tableaux in Daughters of Heaven and the cast of Dorian Gray sitting in the front row all worked a treat.

Downstage’s big yawning brutal concrete was adorned with some sparse furnishings but it is a daunting theatre for a youth group. What they had to fill the theatre was their enthusiasm, their voices, their team work and their wit and they used them exceedingly well.

ENDS

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