Review: The Picture of Dorian Gray Meets Facetune on Broadway

So many of us in the 21^st century have become works of art, modifying our bodies to preserve youth well past a reasonable age, or to fabricate beauty that hitherto did not exist. In that regard, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde’s 1890 novel about a gorgeous man who maintains the appearance of untarnished youth as his soul decays, can be read as a prophecy.

Writer-director Kip Williams’s adaptation for Sydney Theatre Company certainly holds a mirror up to its audience, or rather a screen—the looking glass through which we now view so much of the world. Succession star Sarah Snook plays the title character, and every other role, reprising a performance that won her an Olivier Award in London’s West End. It’s a theatrical tour-de-force, as well as an impressive feat of video engineering. But, unlike the title character, its imperfections are all too apparent.

A black canvas hangs downstage like a giant iPhone, the centerpiece of Marg Horwell’s initially austere scenic design, which transforms the stage of Broadway’s Music Box Theatre into a movie studio. A camera crew films Snook upstage as she speaks the opening lines of the play (the same as the novel) directly into the camera, her face projected onto the screen.

With an arched eyebrow and a languidly held cigarette, she instantly becomes Lord Henry Wotton, admiring the painting of a young gentleman named Dorian Gray that artist Basil Hallward has nearly completed. Snook’s right side is Lord Henry, but her left side, a nebbish clutching a paintbrush, is the artist (Snook easily convinces the giggly audience to accept this convention through sharply contrasting portrayals lubricated by ample charm).  Both men agree it is Basil’s best work, owing in no small part to the extraordinary beauty of the subject.

Upon seeing the finished product, Dorian (Snook dons a cherubic wig by Kylie Clarke) is overcome with mixed emotions, astounded by his own beauty and resentful that the painting will always possess it as he wrinkles and grays. “If the picture could change, and I could be always what I am now,” he exclaims, “I would give my soul for that!” But as a wise Broadway diva once sang, “Be careful what you wish for ‘cause you just might get it.”

And Dorian gets it good and hard, leading a life of scandal and excess that results in the deaths of no fewer than four people, including Sibyl Vane, the young actress he promised to marry before revoking the proposal following a terrible performance of Romeo & Juliet (a novelist and playwright, Wilde also identified as a critic). Throughout, Dorian remains as ravishing as the day he sat for the painting, which, locked away in his attic, takes on every mark and scarlet perversion—a visual manifestation of his soul.

In one of the most memorable scenes, Snook leans in and out of an iPhone photo filter, showing unnaturally plumped lips and clear skin in one moment, then shifting to a splotchy closeup. Later, as she monologues about the widening gulf between the portrait and Dorian’s face, she live-edits a selfie she has just taken, twisting her own image into a sinister grin like some demonic Bob Ross.

Williams and video designer David Bergman cleverly blend live and prerecorded video throughout, allowing Snook to play opposite herself. It is often difficult to tell what is live and what is not, a powerful statement about the beautiful lies we ingest hour after hour as we compulsively scroll through Instagram.

Some theatergoers might object to paying live theater prices to stare at a screen (in this case several, which move about the stage in a delicate ballet), but I was astounded by the precision required to shoot a two-hour movie in one take in front of a live audience. The camera crew (clew, Luka Kain, Natalie Rich, and Benjamin Sheen) are ninja-alchemists, transforming the act of filming into high-stakes theater. Seeing them execute everything without a glitch (I saw none at my performance, but my spies have told me about frozen screens at others) is as thrilling as witnessing a perfect Olympic figure skating routine.

Williams’s staging only becomes more complicated as the play hurtles toward its fateful conclusion, with cinematic sets and detailed, rip-away costumes (both by Horwell) entering the scene as Snook pants like a marathon runner, winded but undaunted. Sound designer Clemence Williams accompanies the action with a combination of original compositions and smartly selected recordings (Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” is the perfect underscoring for Dorian’s montage of hedonism). Yet in telling a story that is so much about excess, Williams and company forget that the secret to making indulgence really count is restraint.

This is most apparent in Williams’s shaggy adaptation, which is faithful to Wilde’s novel to a fault. His decision to include Sibyl’s brother James (who did not appear in the original Lippincott’s run of Dorian Gray, but was added for the expanded book in 1891) adds little to the story beyond a ludicrous chase scene and 15 superfluous minutes, revealing this subplot to be what I always suspected: a bone tossed to a Victorian public with a ravenous appetite for potboilers.

Unfortunately, Williams’s more-is-more approach also creeps into Snook’s performance, which is initially so controlled, yet ends with her whirling and wailing like a washed-up kabuki star.

Rough landing aside, The Picture of Dorian Gray makes a fine introduction to a myth that becomes more central to the Western psyche with each passing year. The world grows older, but Wilde’s story feels as young and dangerous as ever.