Title: The Picture of Dorian Gray
Location: The Music Box Theatre
Written By: Oscar Wilde, adapted by Kip Williams
Summary: A multi-media experience of Oscar Wilde's only novel combining live performance, recorded video, and live video, with all parts performed by one actor.
Highlights: I concluded this most excellent NYC visit with a theatrical experience unlike anything I've ever known. It's thoroughly modern in its innovative use of technology in live performance, bringing new life to this beloved, classic, and much adapted story. Olivier-award winner Sarah Snook (aka Shiv Roy) is all but guaranteed to win the Tony this year, with a performance you could call "tour de force," "a master class on acting," or any other superlative you could think of, and still not fully capture the force that she is on that stage. She plays over a dozen characters live, over two dozen including the recorded video, the most important ones being the narrator (reciting Oscar Wilde's most colorful dialogue), the painter Basil Hallward, the wealthy rogue Lord Henry, and of course, the title character, a beautiful young man who sells his soul to remain so, but at a terrible cost. Sarah is joined on stage by several stagehands who help with costume changes, and five camera operators who capture her from all angles, the video displayed first on one large portrait screen, then on multiple screens, at the same time we're watching her. She's all over the stage, behind the screen, in front of it, even leaving the stage and followed by cameras through the bowels of the theater. The use of a smart phone with filters to transform the realistic and less than perfect human into the flawless portrait is ingenious and mimics the social media curated life that is so pervasive and makes us question what's real. In the same way, the three narrative pieces - live performance, live video, and recorded video - interact seamlessly so that it becomes difficult to know what's what. And Sarah Snook (with her many helpers) pulls it off flawlessly, frantically, passionately, exhaustingly. She barely takes a breath, much less leaves the stage or stops talking, in the two-hour-no-intermission play. It's an astounding artistic and athletic feat to witness, and leaves you simply in awe. The brilliantly and intricately constructed play is on an upward trajectory, the stakes and the energy increasing frenetically to the final stirring conclusion. Brava to Sarah, Kip, and the entire team that makes this truly original theatrical-video hybrid happen every day. It's a fast-moving train that once it starts going, it never stops.
*Once again, I'm using an abbreviated Fringe-style summary for my NYC 2025 trip, since I am in the greatest city in the world with much more exciting things to do than write! Click here to see all of my Broadway-related blog posts.
