"Matthew and I are very excited to see how Japanese audiences react — but I think everyone is absolutely going to love this show," English dancer Richard Winsor said at a Tokyo press conference held in May to preview next week's season of Matthew Bourne's "Dorian Gray," in which he plays the title role.
Winsor, 31, who trained at the Central School of Ballet in London, instantly won over that Tokyo gathering with his friendliness and the lady-killer smiles that won him the part of cleric Father Francis, the convincing con man, in "Hollyoaks," a popular British teen-drama TV series.
The world premier season of "Dorian Gray" at the Edinburgh International Festival in 2008, drew rave reviews and is now the stuff of legend for dance fans. Based on Oscar Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray" (1890) it follows a Victorian aristocrat's descent from narcissism to dissolution and worse. Bourne's reworking, however, introduces a new character — Dorian Gray's doppelgänger — and forsakes the original's class-based context.