By Samuel L. Leiter
April 5, 2025. The Picture of Dorian Gray, adapted by Kip Williams from the 1890 Gothic horror novel by Oscar Wilde (his only one), about a man who neither ages nor loses his beauty, is a stunt show on steroids. Originally directed by Williams for Australia’s Sydney Theatre Company, and now at Broadway’s Music Box, it stars the charismatic Down Under actress Sarah Snook, who found stardom as the slyly conniving Shiv Roy on TV’s “Succession.”
In that masterful series, she used a perfectly believable American accent; here she uses numerous British accents, from high-class posh to working-class Cockney, to portray 26 different roles. Her guises shift from that of a Narrator to an assortment of men and women for whom, when necessary, she dons striking wigs and both full and partial costumes, morphing from role to role—often before our eyes. The result is a two-hour tour de force of physical and vocal stamina and chameleon versatility.
But, unlike Andrew Scott’s much lauded Vanya, Off Broadway, in which he performs alone, playing eight roles mainly by altering his voice and body with the barest use of props, Snook is not alone or unassisted. Instead, her performance is usually surrounded by a team of five, well-choreographed video operators (clew, Luka Kain, Natalie Rich, Benjamin Sheen, and Dara Woo). They and nine other technical aides take part in the curtain call.
The video images are projected on five screens of differing sizes that hang from wires so they can be moved laterally into multiple configurations. Sometimes, in David Bergman’s imaginative video design, they create montage effects, but they’re also capable of forming a single, full-stage image, as in a traditional film.
Occasionally, the stage is empty of scenery; at other times, substantial units, designed by Marg Horwell, slide on and off for the changing locales under Nick Schlieper’s excellent lighting. Horwell is also responsible for the flamboyant costumes, which almost have the scent of the circus about them.
Often, we see Snook upstage behind the screens being helped to change her clothes or wigs, as she changes from role to role, while huge closeups of her features dominate our vision; only infrequently is she alone onstage sans projections. The general impression is of video first, live presence second, the latter even more greatly diminished by how tiny her human figure seems in comparison to the videos.
Moreover, perhaps 50% of the performance consists of prerecorded scenes, perfectly coordinated with the live ones, allowing Snook to be seen simultaneously in multiple characters. There are even moments when the video contrives to have a long table occupied with multiple characters seen not in oversized closeups but in actual human size.
During all this technical and performative wizardry, making the show resemble a brilliant vaudeville act stretched beyond its limits, it’s easy to forget that there’s a play here, not just theatrical legerdemain. And that, of course, is Wilde’s once highly controversial, even scandalous, tale about a beautiful young man, Dorian Gray, so enamored of a painting done of him by artist Basil Hallward, that his Faustian wish to remain forever young and beautiful, his soul be damned, is granted.
Further, having been influenced by the hedonist ideas of the artist’s effete friend, Lord Henry Wotton, who lives for beauty, he betrays his better nature, cruelly rejecting Sybil Vane, the actress he loves and who loves him, when she gives a bad performance before his friends; soon after, she kills herself. Dorian sinks into a life of libertine depravity, retaining his appearance while the painting reflects his aging, ever-rotting essence, until, following the deaths of others in his orbit (one by his own hands), he stabs the portrait and dies. At that moment, the beauteous youth withers into a withered husk of aged ugliness.
The technical accomplishment of all this is impressive, but it greatly dominates the human presence. Moreover, Snook’s performance is entirely in the grand manner, filling the screens not with subtleties of realism, such as she conveyed in “Succession,” but with larger-than-life, nearly caricaturish portrayals. Much of the performance suggests a campy pastiche of what might be considered stereotypically Wildean behavior, with epigram-spouting characters expressing themselves in the kind of piss-elegant, super-arch manner familiar from films set among the upper classes in late 19th-century England.
Each expression of Snook’s eyebrows, eyes, and mouth is greatly exaggerated, usually for comic effect. Because the production allows for infusions of present-day technology and even lip-synched music (including a number by Donna Summers and one by Barbara Harris from the musical The Apple Tree), the introduction of filters with comical, feature-distorting selfie images makes perfect sense.
For me, the scene that most egregiously distorts the content in search of laughter is the one when Sybil, conceived as a human head filling the proscenium frame of a puppet-sized theatre, acts so badly it embarrasses Dorian before his friends. Snook does it with such ridiculous exaggeration that, as expected, many in the audience laugh; however, it serves only to underline the clownish attitude taken toward the material, which seems more intent on scoring performative points than involving us emotionally in characters or situations. Thus, well done as it is, it’s hard to take anything seriously, even when, as the play proceeds, it attempts to do so itself.
Now and then a particular theme makes its point. The homoerotic subtext comes through, as does the notion of how indelible someone’s influence can be on another person, especially today, when “influencer” has become a job title. And, of course, the fascination with extreme narcissism, which helped create a certain American politician, can’t be missed. Other themes, however, are blurred by the bullet-paced action, images, and dialogue.
The Picture of Dorian Gray scores highly for its technical expertise and as a showcase for the exceptional talents of Sarah Snook. It fails, however, to exert the emotional or psychological conviction of Wilde’s novel, sacrificing its literary strengths for performance goals that lessen its impact.
The Picture of Dorian Gray ***
Music Box Theatre, 239 W 45th St., NYC.
Running time: 120 mins. with no intermission. doriangrayplay.com.
Through June 15, 2025.
Photography: Marc Brenner
