Writer: Oscar Wilde
Adaptor and Director: Kip Williams
One woman, a bare stage, and 26 characters. Succession’s Sarah Snook, and Sarah Snook alone, tackles Oscar Wilde’s effervescent prose in a new stage adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray. But Kip Williams’ version of this dark, queer and sultry novel is not just a one-woman show, but a multi-media spectacular that is nothing short of extraordinary.
It starts with three camera angles. The flamboyant Lord Henry Wootton talking to the painter Basil Hallward, and the young, beautiful, impressionable Dorian Gray. Sarah Snook is, of course, all these characters at the same time. A tilt of the head toward a different camera, a new prop, occasionally a new wig, or a tone shift, work to differentiate between each role. But as Dorian Gray is infected, influenced and encouraged into a fierce pursuit of pure hedonism, giving his very soul for the preservation of his prized youth and beauty, the multi-media landscape expands and multiplies.
As the story gets going, Williams builds an entire world out of this Victorian Gothic text. Pre-recorded clips interact with the live on-stage Snook, making entire dinner parties, trips to the opera, and even physical fights fill the stage with an abundance of life. We are transported effortlessly from the opera house to a basement club to Dorian Gray’s own living room and beyond. Snook is backdropped by incredible mobile sets (Marg Horwell’s scenic designs) that are captured by cameras and projected onto large screens that fill the headroom of the stage.
The production loses none of the exciting spontaneity of live theatre with the video elements, however. We’re not watching a pre-recorded Sarah Snook; we are watching Snook split and multiply before our eyes. It’s so seamless it’s even slightly unsettling at times, only a quick glance away from the screen to see Snook standing alone on stage is a reminder that it is an illusion. In the end, the stage management and technical team implementing David Bergman’s video design take a well-deserved bow alongside Snook, instrumental in the captivating choreography that achieves this effect.
Snook’s brilliance is entirely on show in this production, her reputation precedes her and stands up to the test. Of course, the volume of the roles, the swift character changes, the complicated technical choreography are impressive. But it is the weight of the slower moments that really push Snook’s performance into something truly admirable. As Dorian is chased through the forest by the vengeful James Vane, in pursuit of justice for the death of his sister, the multi-media falls away somewhat, and Dorian is left to stare into the eyes of a single innocent hare. The very degradation of Dorian Gray’s soul, the impact of his evil actions, are exposed with stark sadness and Snook carries this weight without a hitch. In the production’s final moments, it is just Snook, a chair, and six camera angles, and Snook exposes Dorian Gray’s corrupted self entirely, with agonizing starkness.
Whether any of this emotion in Williams’ adaptation, particularly the multi-facets of Dorian Gray as a character, is beholden to Wilde’s far more restrained prose is another matter. Indeed, the elegant musings and flamboyant turns of phrase that people expect from Oscar Wilde are occasionally lost in some of the camera gimmicks. Excellent characters like Lord Henry Wotton are undermined by this choice, Williams’ interpretation is more a meditation of Dorian Gray’s internal turmoil than Wilde’s topical response to the Victorian-era pursuit of restraint and conservatism.
But in the case of Oscar Wilde, it almost doesn’t matter. Williams has taken the core of the Victorian novel, the interaction between oneself and one’s physical appearance, and turned it into something utterly compelling. Is it the most profound interpretation? Perhaps not; indeed, when Dorian uses filters on an iPhone to distort his features into something grotesquely beautiful it is outrageously on the nose. But maybe that is why Wilde’s work, Dorian Gray particularly, so often fails in adaptation. It inevitably disappoints when theatre makers try to encapsulate all of Oscar Wilde’s infuriating ambivalence because it’ll never please everyone. But Wilde’s own ambivalence in the preface to the book, it can be argued, backs up Williams’ approach ‘There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well-written, or badly written. That is all.’
It is easy to be won over by the spectacle of it all, but that is because it is indeed, spectacular. In that moment of dark silence between the actor’s final words and the applause, it isn’t hard to anticipate the roaring adoration the crowd gives, absolutely smitten with Williams’ captivating world, and Snook’s monumental performance. It’s unlike anything currently on stage on the West End.
Runs until 11 May 2024
