‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ Broadway Review: Sarah Snook Doesn’t Paint a Pretty Portrait

The "Succession" star plays all the roles in this send-up of the Oscar Wilde classic The post ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ Broadway Review: Sarah Snook Doesn’t Paint a Pretty Portrait appeared first on TheWrap.

Mar 28, 2025 - 04:33

‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ Broadway Review: Sarah Snook Doesn’t Paint a Pretty Portrait

A better title would be “The Parody of Dorian Gray.” Sarah Snook plays all the characters from Oscar Wilde’s 1891 novel about a young man who doesn’t grow old but whose portrait reflects both his real age and moral corruption. This solo “The Picture of Dorian Gray” opened Thursday at the Music Box after a run in London.

At the top of the two-hour show, written and directed by Kip Williams, Snook gives us three impersonations in quick succession: the epigram-spouting roue Lord Henry Wotton, the troubled portraitist Basil Hallward and the callow young beauty Dorian Gray. Depending on where you’re sitting in the Music Box, you may or may not be able to see Snook while she performs this revolving-door act. You can definitely see her face as it is projected on a big screen that’s suspended middle stage. Snook sits behind that screen as she’s recorded by four camera operators. Maybe, if Snook where seated downstage and facing us, her acting here would be more impressive. From what we see on the big screen, her impersonation of three male characters is pretty crude in a burlesque sort of way. Eventually, Snook does move downstage with her scrum of camera operators in tow. It’s then that other characters emerge, not always in person on stage but on that big screen, which is joined by a bunch of other smaller screens that float under the proscenium.

Yes, a lot of “The Picture of Dorian Gray” is taped, and it’s in these canned performances that Snook achieves remarkable transformations that elude her when performing in person. Much of this legerdemain derives from Marg Horwell’s wonderfully ornate Victorian costumes and the uncredited hair and makeup designs, which are remarkable. These changes in pre-recorded physical properties are far more impressive than what Snook manages to perform live on stage.

In one major coup de theatre, Snook’s Lord Henry emerges in the flesh to sit down at a dinner party that includes five other characters, all played by Snook on tape. It is every bit as awesome as what Alec Guinness achieves playing several members of the D’Ascoyne family in the 1949 film classic “Kind Hearts and Coronets.”

Snook’s Dorian Gray, on the other hand, is a mixed bag. In the beginning, the character comes loaded with blond curls, and he acts and sounds a lot like Glynis Johns in “The Chapman Report.” Clearly, Johns playing a ditzy, sex-starved housewife in that 1962 screen potboiler is the far more delightful camp effort.

Not that Snook doesn’t have her fun moments playing Dorian. Despite all the movie screens on stage, it is an awesomely unexpected twist that one of the only glimpses we get of the corrupted portrait of Dorian Gray comes to us via an iPhone camera. The joke is, the horror is Snook’s own face. Granted, she’s lit terribly by designer Nick Schlieper. Otherwise, it’s a truly magical iPhone that creates distorted images of Snook’s face, which provides a devastating critique of people who take selfies. How video designer David Bergman achieves these grotesque effects I have no idea. I’m only a theater critic.

The other wonderful gag here is that Dorian’s biggest worry is not his rapidly deteriorating portrait on the wall. Rather, he keeps checking his mirror and iPhone to make sure his face remains young and untouched despite all the debauchery.

Williams’ adaptation follows Wilde’s original story more closely than the 1945 MGM movie starring George Sanders as Lord Henry and Hurd Hatfield as Dorian. Hatfield does something unexpected in that horror classic: His face throughout remains a tabula rasa. The actor lets the painting do all the acting. Snook takes a very different approach. She eschews the blond curls halfway through the show to don a slick pompadour that’s closer to what Glynis Johns sports in “The Chapman Report.” Snook also goes full-throttle to tear up the stage, even though there isn’t much scenery to put through her acting shredder. Dorian’s visit to an opium den takes us into the bowels of the Music Box – thanks to all those camera operators – and later, Dorian has a shoot-out in the forest with James Vain, brother of the jilted Sybil Vain, who has committed suicide. Bergman’s video design and Horwell’s scenic design make it nearly impossible to tell the difference between what’s happening on stage and what’s being projected on all those frenetically moving screens. It’s a technical tour de force.

As for Snook, her performance goes completely over the top. It’s grand. It’s fraught. She’s no longer Dorian Gray, much less Glynis Johns. She is an actor going mad in front of our eyes. Or perhaps Snook is just showing off big time.

The post ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ Broadway Review: Sarah Snook Doesn’t Paint a Pretty Portrait appeared first on TheWrap.