Casting Confirmed for THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY, A New Musical

Oscar Wilde’s most dangerously handsome antihero is returning to the stage in musical form, with the full company now confirmed for the UK tour of THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY, A New Musical. Christopher Twyford will play Dorian Gray, with Charlotte Castle as Sibyl Vane, Kevin Kennedy as Mr Issacs, Kingsley Judd as Lord Henry Wotton and George McKinley as Basil Hallward. It is a cast that neatly frames the story’s central tensions, youth and experience, innocence and appetite, art and corruption, while giving this new version of Wilde’s novel a recognisable dramatic spine before rehearsals properly begin.

The musical is written by Mark J. Middlemiss, who is credited for the adaptation, music and lyrics, and the production is being sold as a sung-through take on Wilde’s 1890 novel that stays close to the original text. The official website describes it as a dark, traditionally staged piece in two acts set twenty years apart, with a sound drawing on the big British musicals of the 1970s and 1980s. That suggests a version of Dorian Gray that is not chasing irony or contemporary deconstruction, but leaning instead into the story’s lush melodrama, moral rot and gothic glamour. For this material, that feels like a smart instinct, because Wilde’s tale has always had one foot in elegance and the other in nightmare. It also gives the piece permission to be unabashedly theatrical, which is often the best way to handle Wilde.

Around the principal cast, the supporting company fills out the world with a mix of featured roles and multi-track performers. Keegan Featherstone will play Jim Vane, while the production’s own cast page lists Louise Grayford covering Victoria, Agatha and Mrs Vane. Alistair Fitton appears as Alan Campbell and Adrian Singleton, Marie McNaugher plays ensemble alongside Victor and the News Seller, and Meg Luscombe is cast as Hetty. Sam Kingsley will serve as alternate Dorian as well as ensemble and swing, while Charley Robbie is listed as alternate Sibyl, ensemble and swing. For a story so fascinated by disguise and divided selves, that doubling feels entirely in character, and it should give the company flexibility once the tour settles into its road rhythm.

There is already music from the show out in the world. Earlier this month, a full studio cast album was released on major streaming platforms, giving audiences a first look, or rather first listen, at the score before the tour begins. West End Best Friend reported that the album runs to 27 songs and described it as being influenced by the “mega-musicals” of previous decades, while the official site foregrounds an overture and several featured tracks. Releasing the score early gives the musical a chance to build interest on its own terms and hints at a production that believes strongly in its musical identity.

The creative team is also clearly built for scale. Alongside Middlemiss, the production credits additional musical arrangements to Joe Draper, Paul Worthington, Stuart McLean-Fowler, David Haynes and Tony Davis. Alison Parsons is choreographer, Amy Jones is costume designer and head of wardrobe, and Rebekah Maxfield is musical director. Maria Cartwright is resident director, Phil Dodsworth deputy stage manager, Gary Young and Sarah Beckenham share set design duties, Luke Thompson and Tom Cullen are lighting designers, Tim Allerton handles sound design and Andrew Forster is casting director. For a tour, it reads as a serious attempt to give Wilde’s world a full theatrical life rather than a stripped-back presentation.

The itinerary currently published by the production begins at Darlington Hippodrome on 19 October 2026 and continues through Halifax, Hunstanton, Weymouth, Gravesend, Lowestoft, Kettering, Runcorn, Blackpool, Swansea, Stockport, Newcastle, Wakefield, Aberdeen, Perth, Arbroath and New Brighton. Some stops are already on sale and others are still marked as coming soon, but the shape of the route is clear. This is being mounted as a substantial regional tour, not a token run, which should give the show room to find its audience among theatregoers drawn to large-scale literary adaptations and dramatic musical storytelling.

It is also separate from DORIAN: THE MUSICAL, the Southwark Playhouse production seen in London in 2024, a distinction the official site goes out of its way to make. That clarification is useful, because the two shows appear to be taking very different approaches to the same source. Middlemiss’s version is positioning itself as period-based, faithful to Wilde and rooted in an older, more operatic musical vocabulary. Taken together with the casting, the early release of the score and the breadth of the tour, the latest announcement makes the intention plain. This Dorian Gray wants to seduce audiences the old-fashioned way, with a doomed hero, a darkening soul and a stage full of music.