Sarah Snook is the one individual onstage — moreover some cloaked-in-black digital camera operators — in a whopping 26 roles for Broadway‘s “The Image of Dorian Grey.” Director Kip Williams, the previous director of the Sydney Theatre Firm who introduced the play from Australia to the West Finish and at last to New York, retrofits Oscar Wilde’s 1890 traditional of vainness and decadence to a 2025 mindset and visible fashion. “Succession” Emmy winner Snook performs not solely Dorian Grey, however the man who paints the portrait that dooms the dandyish flaneur to narcissistic doom. In addition to 24 different folks, women and men, in his midst.
“The Image of Dorian Grey,” comprised of 60,000 phrases all memorized and monologued by Snook, is now on the Music Field Theatre by means of June 29, with the actress performing six exhibits per week in usually grotesquely distorted close-up courtesy of cameras capturing her each transfer and displaying the assorted characters throughout panels on the stage.
“She did all 101 performances on the West Finish with no understudy and — contact wooden — she was capable of do the identical on Broadway,” Williams advised IndieWire from Australia over the telephone when requested about the truth that, no, Snook doesn’t have an understudy. “It’s a type of exhibits the place it’s so complicated, and it resides so particularly inside that performer, that to have another person do it, it’s a wholly totally different murals.”
In Victorian England, the hedonistic Dorian Grey commissions a painted portrait from Lord Henry Wotton that the artist guarantees will age in order that Dorian himself doesn’t must. That, in fact, doesn’t go to plan, as Dorian’s pursuit of everlasting youth turns into the character’s undoing (and with a bender of Victorian debauchery and eventual homicide alongside the way in which). Williams mentioned it was at all times the concept for a girl to play Dorian, as Eryn Jean Norvill additionally performed all 26 components in Australia, however that he’d be open to casting one other gender taking part in the character in future iterations.
“The drag act on this manufacturing of her taking part in these perceivably male roles creates not solely an expression of the efficiency agenda, which is one thing that all of us do no matter our gender identities, [but it] begins to create dialog round the way in which during which we carry out gender,” Williams mentioned. The play culminates with Snook in a blond pompadour, and in what virtually resembles Elvis drag. “When it comes to trans males and cisgendered males, both queer or in any other case, I’d be open to that. It will simply be totally different. And I’d wish to remake it with that in thoughts as a result of it is a piece about, at its core id, [how] gender and sexuality are such central sides of our humanity.”
Williams was nominated on Thursday for a Tony Award for Greatest Path of a Play, with “The Image of Dorian Grey” additionally up for greatest actress Snook, scenic design (Marg Horwell and David Bergman craft memorable pictures that mix stay theater with pre-recorded footage), costumes, lighting, and sound.
As for the pre-recorded footage, which finds Snook interacting with numerous variations of herself in ornate costume in addition to a extra stripped-down utilitarian look as a narrator, Williams mentioned, “It was a radical breaking of my primary rule in utilizing cameras on stage to deploy prerecord. Up till that time, I had monastically solely ever used stay footage on stage. And that for me finally is as a result of theater is stay, it’s transient, it takes place within the now, after which it’s gone. The extra I learn the ebook, the extra it turned unattainable to disclaim that this was the way in which to understand this manufacturing. In doing so, [it] can be actually, actually true to Wilde’s exploration of the methods during which we carry out a number of variations of ourselves and Wilde’s central philosophy that life is one grand act of theater during which we’re at all times performing an concept of ourselves.”
Additionally dwelling monastically is Snook, who resides in Brooklyn, between performances. She does a matinee and a night present on Saturdays, with further runs Wednesday by means of Friday and Sunday.
“She kind of lives a semi-monklike existence while the present is on,” Williams mentioned. “She eats very healthily. She’s exercising. She does in depth warmups and heat downs pre- and post-show. There’s no espresso, no alcohol, numerous water. So there’s a really form of strict routine that she retains. And after I got here to forged Sarah, one of many issues I knew about her was that she has this unbelievable work ethic and rigor, and I knew that she would embrace the kind of virtually athletic process of performing this function.”
He added that he additionally “knew that she had an unbelievable set of technical presents, together with a rare voice, and that operates on two ranges. One, you might be listening to her voice nonstop for 2 hours. So that you want someone who has a pleasant timbre of a voice you wish to fall into. However on the identical time, that voice must have an athletic technical energy to it that may do, in some instances, two hours, twice in sooner or later, which Sarah does. An actor [in this role] must be chameleonic and their transformations must have unbelievable comedian chops and nice psychological dexterity.”
“The Image of Dorian Grey” additionally integrates social media and facetuning into this reproduction of Wilde’s imaginative and prescient. “It’s in regards to the queer subverse spirit of this textual content [where] Wilde is continually highlighting the artifice of social pretense and puncturing it and doing so with queer camp,” Williams mentioned. It’s humorous once we acknowledge that really the pretenses that all of us invisibly interact with are literally an artifice, are literally an act of efficiency… There’s this extremely darkish and tragic portrait of a person who has positioned their very own wants and their very own needs above the betterment of all these round them, and is corrupted by that, is unraveled by that. And this story about narcissism and about unchecked ego looks like a narrative for 2025.”
Subsequent up: “Dorian Grey” is a part of a trilogy of one-person exhibits Williams is mounting, with the objective of bringing “Unusual Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde” and “Dracula” variations from earlier Sydney Theatre Firm runs to the Northern Hemisphere. “I’m additionally going to be directing quite a lot of totally different exhibits up in London and New York over the following couple of years, which is thrilling,” Williams mentioned. “I’m growing my first function movie. So yeah, there’s rather a lot on the boil, which is nice and so humbling to have that curiosity from audiences in these nice theater cities within the work. Finally, why you do it, you do it for the audiences, and to have that ongoing dialog and dialogue with audiences over totally different productions as you discuss to 1 one other by means of the items.”
“The Image of Dorian Grey” runs at Broadway’s Music Field Theatre by means of June 29.