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When Sarah Snook takes the curtain call at the end of her stunning performance in The Picture of Dorian Gray, she’s not in the company of other actors, but a black-clad crew of camera operators, dressers, make-up artists and technicians. That’s because she and they are the cast in this sizzlingly clever adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s novel.
Director Kip Williams, of Sydney Theatre Company, has the super-smart idea of packaging Wilde’s Gothic classic for our own age — a world obsessed with image where you can curate your life, your likes and your looks on the smartphone in your hand. Snook (known for her starring role in the TV series Succession) plays Dorian Gray, the exquisite young man who suddenly realises that a portrait of him in his prime will never age and so bargains his soul to swap places. The painting, hidden away, will grow old and disfigured; the man himself will remain as beautiful as the day he turned 20. That deal also licenses him to sin at will, as gluttony, lechery, betrayal and even murder will leave no trace upon his features.
But through the wizardry of technology, Snook also takes on every other character in the book, interacting live with herself as the sinister Lord Henry Wotton, the besotted artist Basil Hallward and the hapless actress Sybil Vane. Screens slide on to the stage, live footage spliced with recordings, as she steps in and out of the action. It’s mind-boggling — at one point Snook dines with another six of her onstage selves; at another she engages in a gun chase with herself; elsewhere she edits her own image, projected above her, using a face filter on a phone.
It’s a show that plays games, intelligently, with art and artifice, essence and appearance. Which is the true Dorian — the picture or the man? Which is the true Snook — the live human on the stage or her projected image on the screen? But it also has a point. It emphasises today’s damaging obsession with self-image. It touches too on the slipperiness of self, the many parts we play and the role of performance and costume in establishing identity, gender, class and sexuality. Like the novel, the play asks us to consider where, if anywhere, our true self lies.
And, as with the recent London staging of Orlando, it celebrates the craft involved in creating stage and screen “reality”. Marg Horwell’s costumes relish the camp in lavish Victorian fashion — they wouldn’t look out of place at the Met Gala. There’s a mischievousness too to Snook’s high-definition performance: she winks at the audience, pouts and preens, winces as an assistant rips off a moustache, and snaps in and out of character in an instant. It’s intense, precise, demanding. Only at one point, when Dorian is alone in a forest, do the screens retreat, allowing her to stand still and embrace a sort of peace.
The third-person narration and melodramatic twists do begin to grate, and you miss the society of other actors — which is maybe part of the point. The show doesn’t reach the deep longing and sadness that it could. But perhaps it’s right for a show about the folly of perfection to be not quite perfect. And this is a virtuoso performance in an astonishing piece of theatre.
★★★★★
To April 13, doriangrayplay.com
