You can never guess what Matthew Bourne will come up with next — we’ve had La Sylphide, set in a high-rise council flat; a touch of suburban America in Edward Scissorhands, and, of course, his celebrated Swan Lake with its flock of male swans.

As soon as I heard he was making it, Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray struck me as being right up Bourne’s street, but I was interested to hear from the man himself why he chose it.

“I’ve known the story for some time, but it just seems to have this parallel with what’s going on today in society, in the arts and in culture. This idea of retaining youth was an ideal in Wilde’s time, but it’s become much more prevalent now, to the point where everyone is at least a little concerned about this.

“People are always telling each other how young they look. But I was also interested in the idea of someone being corrupted by becoming a celebrity, although Dorian delves into much darker things than most people do — or maybe not?

“This story about modern celebrity is very interesting; about how, when the lights and the cameras turn on to you, everybody wants a piece of you, and also everything becomes very accessible to you. This can change you very much inside, and that’s what happened to Dorian.”

Bourne has brought the story into the present century, and set it in the worlds of art and fashion and photography. The painter of Wilde’s story, Basil Hallward, is now a fashion photographer who discovers the unknown Dorian Gray and makes him the star of an advertising campaign for a men’s cologne.

Bourne also brings the somewhat masked homoeroticism of the original to the forefront by making Wilde’s actress, Sybil Vane, whom Dorian briefly loves, into the male ballet dancer Cyril Vane.

In another switch, the decadent Lord Henry Wotton is now Lady H, the publisher of a fashion magazine.

“She is a kind of arts benefactor, someone very influential in the arts world, and runs magazines. She takes Dorian under her wing — and into her bed as well. They both do actually — there’s a ménage a trois going on, which is very much implied in the novel. Dorian is a beautiful young man who becomes an icon who everyone wants to be like and wants to know.”

Wilde had to be very careful how far he went in his references to homosexuality. I wondered whether Bourne felt that Wilde himself would have made Sybil Vane a man if he had dared.

“I definitely think that. There’s no evidence that he ever wrote that, but it rings more true for Wilde. Interestingly, one of the reasons that I changed the sex of Lord Henry was that the whole story felt a little too misogynistic in the way Dorian treats Sybil Vane.

“But by making Lady H a strong woman rather than Lord Henry, it balances it out in a sense, and makes it more palatable for a modern audience, and into something that’s more true for today. But I do think Wilde would have made the Sybil Vane character a man had he been able to do that.”

Bourne’s work always seems so sure, as though its creation has been pre-ordained in some way, but, of course, that isn’t the case, so I asked how he starts off on the long journey of making a new piece.

“It’s different for each piece. Sometimes it’s led by the music, if that already exists, but this is the first time I’ve adapted a novel to a contemporary setting — or any kind of setting really. Music or film have usually been my starting points, but having a novel was really exciting. It meant I was able to make the work completely into my concept, and the music came later in the process. I wrote the story first and made it work in its new contemporary context.

“Of course, there aren’t any words in my piece, but I felt that it was a strong moral story, a black fairy story, and that it would work.”

How does he handle the actual ageing of the portrait?

“I don’t emphasise that aspect too much — I go more for the internal decay of the person, so we don’t have a literal portrait in the attic. The main image of Dorian is a multiplied image. He becomes the face and the body of a fragrance, and his face is seen in every magazine, every billboard, so everyone feels they know him.

“I thought that was really interesting, because today you can reach many more people very suddenly. But we do show a billboard later in the piece where Dorian is looking weathered and distorted, because it’s been hanging up for a while. But it’s more about what happens to him inside.”

I put it to Bourne that his version is much sexier and druggier than Wilde would have dared to show.

“I think Wilde would love it. I think if he is looking down, he’ll be having a good time.”

lDorian Gray is at the Milton Keynes Theatre from June 9 to 13.