The Vortex

40 x 60 inch poster for the Gate Theatre's 2014 production of Noël Coward's The Vortex (1924). The play focuses on a nymphomaniac socialite (Florence Lancaster) and her cocaine-addicted son (Nicky Lancaster). The poster features a distorted/manipulated period portrait of a slightly androgynous young man – nominally Nicky Lancaster. The intervention of offset concentric rings (into the image) creates a new, disturbing portrait that is analogous with the play's themes of decadence and hedonism and Nicky's personal struggles with drug addiction and his repressed homosexuality.