Sarah Snook in The Picture of Dorian Gray (Photo: Marc Brenner)
In a swirl of sweat, wigs, and live projections, Sarah Snook plays a flurry of Oscar Wilde’s characters—26 to be exact—in the campy take on hedonism, vanity, morality, and sin that is The Picture of Dorian Gray.
This tech-centric production is full of anachronisms, self-awareness, and excess. Adaptor and director Kip Williams wants to put the idea of the performance of life at the center of the piece. Though with a celebrity on stage, it shifts the focus. It becomes less about our performative selves, more about Snook’s winning marathon performance.
Dorian Gray (Snook) is a handsome twenty-five-year-old youth who all the men covet and are drawn to. He is being painted by fidgety, obsessive Basil (Snook) but Basil’s friend Harry (Snook) cannot help himself but corrupt Gray with a lust for life. Gray makes a pledge upon his youthful portrait that he wishes he could keep his youth while the painting bears the savagery of time and sin. And he starts to see the painting reflecting his degradation. Exhilarated by his ability to stay young and pour all his bad behavior into the painting he leans in and becomes a scandalous figure in London who many are afraid to be in the same room with. He engages in murder, opium, blackmail, and all sorts of societal boundary testing.
When the play begins, a massive screen is center stage. Snook begins her performance behind it with a camera crew who follows her for the next two hours (and should be heralded as well). The screen is central to the production. With extreme close-ups, we watch Snook at pore level (she’s flawless, drop the skincare routine, please). But also to achieve the extreme number of characters Snook plays, the screens become layered with Snooks. She performs live on screen while a digital Snook enters the screen as well to share the scene with her. At times, her recorded voice is off-screen in dialogue with her on-stage one. Occasionally, they fight over who is to take the next line in the play.
Some of the characters she plays only exist in projection—an elderly dinner hostess, a sour politician, a flirt. While on stage (and on screen), we can see her changing wigs and changing characters. Props become symbols of each character: Basil has a paint brush and Harry a cigarette. She might turn her head and change her tone and by taking up the prop become one or the other. Though in other moments, she gets a full makeover to appear on stage (and screen) as Harry in a brown wig and moustache. Or Dorian in a tousled blond curls and sideburns.
While Snook is tossing wigs and costumes on and off, the able camera crew (clew, Luka Kain, Natalie Rich, Benjamin Sheen, Dara Woo) follows her, move set pieces in, holds props and further makes the impossible possible. Harry’s cigarette smoke enters the screen because one of the camera operators is holding it to the lens.
The video, projection, and technology are central to the show. I did start to wonder what a “straightforward” gothic melodrama version of this story might have been like—probably unintentionally ridiculous and mannered. But this one-woman take delivers the Wilde extravagance and Victorian silliness with a knowing smirk and makes the too-muchness the point as well.
Your mileage may vary as to whether you enjoy the heavy winks in the audience’s general direction. The approach started to wear on me midway through and then regained some of its power at the end. Personally, I found Gray’s collapse (and Snook’s performance of it) much more interesting than his period of decadence.
As Gray leans into his new guilt-free misbehavior, the staging engages in an extended sequence of Snook becoming different famous paintings, while exploring all Gray’s new hobbies (fashion, music, clubbing). It didn’t quite click.
Though as the play goes on, Gray’s costuming accelerates with his increasing paranoia, culminating in an explosion of what could only be described as Rockabilly Mariachi band meets floral bouquet. A triumph of design for sure.
Gray’s wild self-exploration is supposed to reach its nadir as Snook films herself on a cellphone and autotunes her face into some wide-eyed Bambi, with big red lips, and smooth skin, with a terrifying level of malleability. We are pressured to consider our selfie, face-filtered social media world. But there is something too obvious and flip about it.
I love contemplating the idea of our performative selves, but the play struts and poses its ideas and employs too much heavy underlining. I mean, none of this is subtle. Wilde wasn’t either. But this whole production is about pulling off the stunt rather than what is said with them.
Even so, Snook is incredible to watch as she is put through all this “performance.” She is not just playing dress-up. She is inhabiting each of these characters and finding a body language and vocal language to express them. From an innocent Gray with a vacancy to his mind, to a delirious teen actress losing her mind on stage, to the corrupting Harry savoring his destruction, she throws herself wholeheartedly into each scenario. She rises to the play’s challenge and for most that will be the takeaway. Though I admit, I would probably be even happier to enjoy watching her work in a richer, more thoughtful play.
One of the production’s strongest moments is when the screens disappear (not saying they are inherently bad but removing them becomes a dramatic and effective intention). We are in a forest and trees descend where there were once screens. Gray is frantic that he has been followed by his ex-fiancée’s out-for-revenge brother. He comes face-to-face with a hare (not played by Snook, it is unseen). Gray must confront his life, his choices, and his mortality. And in the quiet, we finally get a sincere, emotional moment rather than one for show.