The Picture of Dorian Gray review – Sarah Snook plays 26 characters in dazzling, dangerous solo show
Theatre Royal Haymarket, London
Aided by elaborate tech, multiple screens and an angelic wig, the Succession star gives a performance that is mischievous, swaggering and operatic
Does Sarah Snook’s one-woman take on Oscar Wilde’s Faustian tale confirm the inexorable rise of celebrity-led theatre? It follows fast in the glittery footsteps of Andrew Scott’s one-man Vanya, and Eddie Izzard’s Great Expectations. Is this the West End’s direction of travel? Possibly. But if the result is this tinglingly virtuoso and startlingly dangerous then I welcome canonical solo vehicles with the mischievous, swaggering and operatic Snook at their helm.
At first, it seems staged in the same vein as Vanya, reliant on Snook to create the effects. She grabs a paintbrush to play the earnest artist, Basil, who creates the portrait enabling Dorian Gray to stay fatally young, and then dons a pink smoking jacket for the devilish Sir Henry, whose invisible smoke-rings she draws with a twirling finger. Dorian is conjured in a few gestural tics (a boyish smirk, a giggle) and an angelic wig so he appears rather like Peter Shaffer’s Mozart in Amadeus. But where Vanya remained lo-fi, this “cine-theatre” production is technologically elaborate in its imagination.
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