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Review: Sarah Snook Succeeds Spectacularly in Painting the Picture of Dorian Gray
March 27, 2025, 10:53.17 pm ET

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Photos: Marc Brenner

By Brian Scott Lipton

The one-person show, often with the performer playing multiple characters, has produced some of the New York theater’s most memorable evenings, from Jefferson Mays in “I Am My Own Wife” to Jodie Comer in “Prima Facie” to Andrew Scott’s current turn in “Vanya,” in which he effortless essays all eight roles in an updated take on the Chekhov classic.

But now, Australian actress Sarah Snook – best known for her role as Shiv Roy in TV’s “Succession” – is outdoing them all in Kip Williams’ technologically dazzling and often dizzying adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s 1891 novel “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” now at The Music Box.

In a two-hour span, Snook, who only periodically appears front and center on the stage, manages to play -- with remarkable differentiation -- dozens of major and minor characters from Wilde’s novel. They range from the vain and ultimately amoral Dorian (who sells his soul so his painting can age while he does not) to his licentious mentor Sir Henry Wooton, the infatuated artist Basil Hallward, and the lovestruck actress Sibyl Vane (whom Dorian carelessly woos and discards) to the elderly housekeeper Mrs. Leaf, to Alan Campbell, a chemist who does Dorian an enormous favor with tragic consequences.

Technically, Snook never leaves the stage – she even sometimes changes both her wigs and Victorian-inspired costumes (by Marg Horwell, also responsible for the clever sets) in front of us. Nonetheless, most of what we see and hear occurs on a series of ever-changing hanging screens. Indeed, the production frequently uses on-stage recording (with the help of five on-stage camera operators), pre-recorded voice-overs, and stunning video by David Bergman to accomplish its Herculean task, one which allows these characters to be visually in conversation with each other (as well as the show’s unnamed narrator).

Perhaps fittingly, Williams isn’t all that interested in telling Wilde’s story “straight,” from urging Snook to veer into camp for some of her portrayals, to the use of anachronistic devices including cell phones and TikTok filters, to 20th-century recordings of Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” and Barbara Harris’ “Gorgeous” (from Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick’s 1966 musical “The Apple Tree.”) to reinforce some of the show’s scenes.

Despite all that, the show’s biggest issue is that Williams’ interest in crafting Snook’s tour-de-force comes at the expense of Wilde’s novel, which is simultaneously a criticism of conventional morality and a cautionary tale about giving into one’s basest desires.

I suspect much of the audience won’t remember anything other than the show’s basic plot – which could have been told in closer to 90 minutes -- as Wilde’s words (some of the script come verbatim from the novel) often whiz past us in a blur as we concentrate too hard on “where in the world is Sarah Snook,” a fact reinforced by the somewhat tepid laughter even Wilde’s legendary witticisms receive.

Ultimately, though, the play’s not the thing in “The Picture of Dorian Gray.” Instead, it’s witnessing the colorful, bravura work by a fearless actress (in her Broadway debut!) that is more than worth the price of admission.

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