The Picture of Dorian Gray starring Sarah Snook – Reviews Round-up

"Sarah Snook plays 26 characters in dazzling, dangerous solo show"

"Aided by elaborate tech, multiple screens and an angelic wig, the Succession star gives a performance that is mischievous, swaggering and operatic"

"Originally adapted in 2020 by Sydney Theatre Company’s artistic director, Kip Williams, who again directs, the result is a true high-wire act, not only because of Snook’s fleet and fabulous performance but also because of the accompaniment of screens, pre-recorded footage, live film crew, and orchestration of technology that is as dazzling as it is complicated, heightening theatricality rather than distracting from it."

"It goes from a clever, daring game, schlocky and over-acted (Snook variously writhes, dances and bursts into lip-synced song in what seems like an experimental cabaret) to something far more serious and accomplished."

"Some scenes require athleticism, others sudden stillness. It demands an exacting synchronicity and she gets it pitch perfect, powering through 26 characters."

"Sarah Snook triumphs in this game-changing piece of theatre"

"Inhabiting all 26 characters, the Succession star's one-woman take on the Oscar Wilde tale is a chameleonic tour de force"

"... for once that, yes, wild applause seemed fully justified. For almost two hours, the 36-year-old holds us in thrall, inhabiting all 26 characters in Kip Williams’ adaptation, narrating as she goes."

"The mise-en-scène creates a darting sense of labyrinthine London but there’s nowhere for the performer to hide – and you need nerves of steel and talent in spades to tackle such a risk-taking theatrical and filmic challenge. From the start, though, you’re not only in the grip of a dazzling conceit (image-consciousness lying at the heart of the tale) but in the hands of an actress of exceptional pluck and mercurial power."

"At every turn, it feels as though Williams, directing, pushes things further, and adds to the fiendish challenge."

"... Wilde’s cautionary tale always had the veneer of black comedy and Williams makes its ambivalent eye on temptation, vanity and narcissism a satire for today, using smart-phone filters to ram home Dorian’s monstrous self-obsession."

"Succession’s Sarah Snook gives a virtuoso performance in The Picture of Dorian Gray"

"Oscar Wilde’s novel is adapted for our age in this technically astonishing show at London’s Theatre Royal Haymarket"

"It’s a show that plays games, intelligently, with art and artifice, essence and appearance. Which is the true Dorian — the picture or the man? Which is the true Snook — the live human on the stage or her projected image on the screen? But it also has a point. It emphasises today’s damaging obsession with self-image."

"There’s a mischievousness too to Snook’s high-definition performance: she winks at the audience, pouts and preens, winces as an assistant rips off a moustache, and snaps in and out of character in an instant. It’s intense, precise, demanding. Only at one point, when Dorian is alone in a forest, do the screens retreat, allowing her to stand still and embrace a sort of peace."

"... this is a virtuoso performance in an astonishing piece of theatre."

"Sarah Snook dazzles on every possible level"

"Andrew Scott in last year’s one-man Vanya was magnificent, but this performance is something else entirely, two hours of acting dynamite"

"I struggle to recall ever seeing a more bravura performance in the West End."

"Voices, all pre-recorded by Snook, intersect the live action – and then the magic truly starts, as Snook begins to converse with other characters, all played by her, who appear in pre-recorded segments on the screens. At one point, she chats at a lunch party to six other versions of herself. This impeccable technological feat, so fraught with potential peril, unfolds without a single glitch."

"Adaptor and director Kip Williams makes his brilliant production speak eerily well to our self-obsessed social media age, in which we are constantly constructing “portraits” of ourselves for public consumption."

"Andrew Scott in last year’s one-man Vanya was magnificent, but this performance is something else entirely, two hours of unceasing acting dynamite. Even the implacable Logan Roy would smile in delighted amazement if he could see this."

"Sarah Snook plays a succession of 26 characters... and what a Wilde success! "

"Playing 26 characters from the book – and presenting them in the style of an art gallery video installation — this is a show that is as brilliant in its conception as it is mesmerising in its execution."

"Snook is serviced like a Formula One racing driver by a team of crack stage hands and film crew, deftly and speedily fitting her with cigs, wigs, and facial hair."

"But this is a unique virtuoso performance, matching Wilde’s love of artifice with her own gender-fluid take on the story that is (fear not) never trite or woke. Instead, it is by turns intense, mischievous, elegant and grotesque."

"... this is an exceptional and unusual piece of work that also presents Snook’s Dorian as a prototype TikTok influencer – editing her face on a mobile phone for plumper lips, longer lashes and bionic eyebrows – and bringing this cautionary tale bang up to date, in form and content."

"This could lose 15 minutes, but beyond that I’d say it is pretty much perfect. Yes, Snook’s performance is staggeringly good. So is the way Kip Williams’s production gradually ups the ante for monkey business as Snook interacts with more and more pre-recorded versions of herself."

"Yet, flashy as it gets, form matches content in a story of narcissism run amok. It’s all about the image, about how we project ourselves. I hate to use the r-word, but a great story is made thrillingly relevant."

"Sarah Snook is astonishingly good"

"Morphing from character to character, it’s a virtuoso performance from the Succession star"

"Live and recorded footage and grotesque Instagram-filtered selfie visions, shown on a series of dangling screens, mesh with her physical presence as she romps round a playroom stage in a series of outrageous costumes, wigs and stick-on sideburns. It’s a virtuoso performance bereft of vanity. Once you get past the basic premise, that is."

"As a woman playing both men and women Snook emphasises the artificiality of Wilde’s world and – by the by – shows that the veil he drew over the story’s homoeroticism was as thin as a cigarette paper."

"This is a technically adroit and complex production in which a team of stage managers play almost as important a part as Snook."

"Her extreme, carnivalesque performance here is like nothing else I’ve ever seen."

"Sarah Snook puts in an astonishing performance in this technically dazzling – and dazzlingly camp – take on the Wilde classic"

"This one-woman stage adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s short horror is a dizzying technical masterpiece, boasting a tour-de-force performance from Sarah ‘Shiv Roy’ Snook in a multitude of roles. It is also incredibly camp. As in literally one of the campest things I’ve ever seen, a show that makes ‘Mamma Mia!’ look like a monster truck rally."

"...there is something particularly revelatory about adaptor-director Kip Williams staging it as pretty close to a celebrity drag king show. Snook plays every single character; many minor roles are pre-recorded and consequently she is able to be lavishly costumed up in parts that range from elderly pink-haired gentlewomen to rough, bearded scoundrels."

"... the wonder of Williams’s production is in how much it builds and builds."

"It unfurls into a truly dazzling technical construct, a trippy, doomy two hour odyssey. Snook deserves an Olivier just for hitting her cues, frankly, and her accent work..."

"Stunning, but it’s not exactly heavy on emotional depth, mind... It‘s a turn! A big spectacular turn! It’s exhilarating but basically shallow. And why not?"

"Fascinating – and wildly entertaining"

"Sarah Snook of Succession fame is astonishing in this dazzling adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s novel"

"This version, conceived and directed by Kip Williams for Australia’s Sydney Theatre Company, frolics in Wilde’s purple prose without becoming smothered by it, to become its own brilliantly unhinged, camp creation. Performed by Sarah Snook of the TV megahit Succession, it’s a riot of language, images and ideas, a full-on sensual assault. It makes the novel’s queer sensibility flamboyantly overt, while angling a gilded mirror at 21st-century society and the lies we tell ourselves – and each other – about our looks and our lives. The reflection that gazes back at us may not be pretty, but the show is a stunner."

"Sarah Snook impresses, the script doesn’t"

"[Sarah Snook] is indeed very watchable in a production that cleverly fuses live action with pre-recorded sequences. You can’t help marvelling at the energy and concentration she displays as she synchronises her voice and movements with the leering faces on David Bergman’s video screens."

"But does the script capture the book’s hypnotic combination of the real and supernatural? Not really. Williams, who talks about Wilde’s “queer subversion” in his programme note, is much more interested in wallowing in camp. And so the audience is invited to snigger at every turn."

"The tale unfolds with next to no variation in tone: for all the bravura camerawork, we might as well be watching the Victorian equivalent of Acorn Antiques."

"This show may be a glimpse of the technological future of theatre, but as storytelling, it’s old hat."

"Sarah Snook’s one-woman Wilde is so wrong it’s almost right"

"The casting is so extravagantly wide of the mark, it intrigues."

"Make no mistake: this is The Picture of Sarah Snook, her celebrity vehicle, her showcase, a rampageously staged flirtation and so wrong you can almost persuade yourself it is right."

"This production undermines the novel’s seriousness, sending it up with a vaudeville brashness that borders on madness. The fatal ending is more an exclamation mark than a sobering response to Wilde’s exquisitely merciless conclusion."

"Sarah Snook Dazzles in a Flashy Stage-Meets-Screen Retelling"

"The only character traits that the versatile Snook chooses to carry forward from her “Succession” character Shiv Roy is the gleaming sense of entitled ambition. That’s the hallmark of the beautiful title character, whom initially we do not meet."

"The technical sophistication grows and grows, often with high-level wit creating a wicked sense of camp mirroring the themes of the novel. Interrogating his own beauty begins with just a glorious gleam in Snook’s eye beneath a bubbly blond wig, as his ever more “perfect” face is projected on multiple screens and made ever more false."

"The element missing from this bravura evening is the engagement of feeling: there is more emoting than heartfelt emotion. But, in Williams and Snook’s defense, that’s absent from the original too and anyone seeking sincerity from “The Picture of Dorian Gray” is looking in the wrong place. Not for nothing did Wilde observe that “The first duty in life is to be as artificial as possible.”"