The Picture of Dorian Gray, Theatre Royal Haymarket review ★★★★★

Sarah Snook, the Emmy, Golden Globe and Critics’ Choice Award-winning star behind Succession’s Shiv Roy, is in a West End play. Not only is she in it, she’s entirely it, playing the titular lead in adaptor-director Kip Williams’ take on Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray plus every single character who crosses the vain rascal’s path. How? With help from some spectacular stage technology. But watching the real Snook, trailed by a technical team of camera operators and stage hands, interacting with herself on screen via pre-recorded snippets of action can be a dizzying experience that makes it hard to connect with this production emotionally.

Employing cameras to enhance theatrical productions with cinematic close-ups is a growing trend. When there’s the budget to ensure the tech performs without a blip, it can be spectacularly effective, like in Jamie Lloyd’s Sunset Boulevard, that briefly took the action out into the street, streaming it back into the auditorium. But it’s a fine balance, and in Williams’ production, we spend too much time watching the screens over the stage. Still, Snook does a flawless job of courting the cameras, flitting between their lenses effortlessly.

The production runs like a staged reading of the 1890 novella, with Snook playing narrator as well as all its characters. She takes it at a lick: delivering the cautionary tale of vanity, debauchery and a man’s quest for eternal youth in what seems like a single breath – though a two-hour one at that.


Sarah Snook in The Picture of Dorian Gray. Credit: Marc Brenner

It’s a wonderfully unselfconscious performance, and from the mischievous twinkle in her eye, it’s clear she’s having fun with it. But between the quiffed wigs, sideburns and costume changes, it's very busy. When it takes a whole team coming on stage to facilitate each of these changes, it can be stunting to watch. It’s hard not to draw comparisons with Andrew Scott’s recent one-man Vanya, in which he masterfully conjured every character with barely a prop.

Snook is clearly up to the task, bringing far more to each characterisation than her costumes and wigs (though Marg Horwell’s barnets are a marvel), and infusing each part with heaps of humour. Strip it all back and we’d have a very good thing here.

This is not the first production to draw parallels between Dorian’s unease with the reality of his appearance and today’s trend for filtering images of ourselves for social media. Still, David Bergman’s video design allows this to be explored playfully as a selfie-taking Snook distorts and elongates her features on screen, while never breaking character.

The majority of the production is played for laughs and this extends to Horwell’s set design, which populates the stage with comedic portraits as well as screens framing the pre-recorded Snooks. It’s trippy too, not least when heady clubbing beats interrupt what's otherwise a period piece, or when disembodied arms offer Dorian cigarettes, pens, doughnuts and even botox. There’s a stray song in there too, which Snook warbles with aplomb.

Entertaining, yes, and terrific affirmation of Snook’s versatility, but you might just find yourself wishing those screens could be locked away in an attic by the end, leaving you face-to-face with the performer.