Bourne to be Wilde - Matthew Bourne interview

INTERVIEWING Matthew Bourne is usually the easiest thing in the world. He welcomes you into his rehearsal studio, gives you a flavour of the show, then chats freely about the creative process. Not this time. Bourne's much anticipated new production, Dorian Gray, is enjoying a 'closed rehearsal', with anyone not connected to the show strictly off limits.

Not only is there no chance of a sneak peak, but Bourne will only talk about his plans prior to starting rehearsals. Once he's immersed in the gestation period, he won't re-emerge until he's given birth to new show – due to premiere at the International Festival this week.

Bourne's caution is well-founded. Despite an extensive back catalogue of successful shows, the 48-year-old choreographer has a lot riding on this new work. Unlike most of his previous productions, there's no existing ballet or score to draw from. In the past, Tchaikovsky's opulent Nutcracker was relocated to Sweetieland; Swan Lake switched to an all-male cast; Carmen became the raunchy garage-set Car Man; and the romantic ballet, La Sylphide was transformed into the alcohol-fuelled Highland Fling.

But this time, all Bourne had to work with was Oscar Wilde's 19th-century novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray. That, and a very vivid imagination. Understandably, he had a few early nerves about the project, and its premiere. "Initially I was quite worried," he admits. "Because the Edinburgh Festival is so high profile. But actually it's protected in many ways. Dorian will open within the safe haven of a festival that presents new work – it's a forum to try something new. People are in the mood for that at a festival, so now I feel quite good about it."

In reality, Bourne has far less to worry about than Wilde did when his book was first published in 1890. Despite toning it down for re-publication a year later, Wilde still fell foul of the narrow-minded morality of the Victorian era. Today, Wilde's tale of drugs, sex and hedonism seems almost tame. Does Bourne feel he can walk into the rehearsal room and do pretty much anything without fear of reprisal?

"I certainly do," he says. "Absolutely. It's a story about sex and there's a certain amount of violence in there – so I'm not going to shy away from either of those, particularly as it's set in the present day." The contemporary setting will be what sets Bourne's production apart from any other adaptations of Wilde's novel. Bringing themes of temptation, corruption and the power of youth bang up to date, he is placing his show in a photographer's studio.

The portrait of Dorian, which sits in the attic slowly ageing in Wilde's version, is now an advertising billboard. In Act One, it's pristine – a vision of youthful beauty as Dorian's fame reaches its peak. By Act Two, when his depraved deeds become increasingly out of control, the billboard deteriorates – much like Dorian's morality. "I tried to find an image that would reach a lot of people in contemporary society," explains Bourne. "And an advertisement is seen all around the world. So Dorian is the face of a fragrance – one of those photos that bores into your mind, you see it everywhere and you desire it."

But fame costs, and more than one celebrity has paid the price with their life in recent years. Money and popularity buys many things – not all of them good for you, and the recent drug-related death of Heath Ledger had a profound effect on Bourne. "When you become a celebrity and the camera is turned on you – what does that bring with it?" he asks. "What are you introduced to as a person and how does it corrupt your soul when everyone around you wants a piece of you?"

In Wilde's novel, Dorian's many vices – drugs included – shocked Victorian readers. Finding a modern equivalent, however, isn't easy. "That's been the hardest thing actually," says Bourne. "Because what is it that shocks people today? Very little. Pretty much everything is acceptable now, you see it all on TV. The only thing that has any real shock value is the fact that Dorian kills a couple of people. And by the end, he's surrounded by death – suicides follow him around, and any association with him seems to end in disaster. So in many ways what he'd be called today is a serial killer."

Bourne's admiration of Wilde's novel dates back to his early twenties, and he's toyed with the idea of staging it ever since. But the lack of anybody remotely likeable in the story gave him cause for concern. After all, compared to pretty little Clara in his Nutcracker!, or the vulnerable Edward Scissorhands and romantic lead in his Swan Lake, Dorian and his cohorts have little to recommend them.

"At first I was put off adapting it because the characters are quite unsympathetic," says Bourne. "But then I realised it's just another type of story – a classic cautionary tale. And there are lots of loveable, charming villains, like Sweeney Todd and Hannibal Lecter, so I'm not worried about that now."

Bourne was also unimpressed by the novel's female characters, who are "pretty soppy and neglected". So, in an inspired piece of gender bending, Bourne has turned Lord Henry Wotton, the aristo largely responsible for corrupting Dorian, into powerful magazine editor, Lady H. Dorian's tragic fiance, Sibyl Vane, is now Cyril, a ballet dancer – a switch in sexual preference that Wilde clearly wanted to do, but felt unable to.

"When it gets to the part in the novel where Dorian says he's in love with Sibyl, it just doesn't ring true," says Bourne. "So I thought that character has to be a guy. And it makes complete sense in the fashion world that you would have an incredibly powerful woman like Lady H, who takes Dorian as a protg, manipulates him for her own ends and introduces him to a new world of people and places."

Despite his murderous ways, Dorian's descent into immorality may well elicit some sympathy from the audience. Or, at least, an appreciation that the glare of the spotlight can blind those young impressionables standing in it. "I want to show Dorian initially as an ordinary young man who hasn't had any attention drawn to him," says Bourne. "So I'll start with a scene where he's a waiter and you don't even notice him. Then, once we turn the light on him, he suddenly becomes an image – and that's his downfall. It's not something that was born in him, he just discovers the power of his own beauty."

• Dorian Gray is at the King's Theatre, 22-30 August, 8pm, with 2:30pm matinees on 23 and 30 August.