
Some plays you watch. Others grab you by the collar, pull you into the spotlight and refuse to let you blink.
Such is the case with the Broadway adaptation of, The Picture of Dorian Gray, a jaw-dropping, genre-melting retelling that trades Victorian drawing rooms for a digitally choreographed fever dream and anchors it all with a single actress who somehow becomes over two dozen characters.
Yes, everyone. All the twisted souls and tortured beauties Oscar Wilde dreamed up, now embodied by one woman in a tour de force that’s part stagecraft, part séance and part Olympic event.
I say that with reverence. This is a two-hour sprint, no intermission, no mercy.
The setup. A stark stage framed by computer-controlled video panels that don’t just serve as scenery. They are co-stars.
Ghostly projections, echoing past selves and perfectly timed interactions allow the actress to quite literally converse, dance and duel with herself in real-time.
The effect is eerie, magical and seamless. Not a gimmick. Never once does it feel like a tech demo or the mundane reality show techno stuns in Sunset Boulevard.
And the actress! My god, Sarah Snook is all that in her Broadway debut. Snook just won a Tony for her portrayal of Dorian Gray.
She doesn’t just play Dorian and Lord Henry and Basil and Sybil. She inhabits them. She slips from one to the next like quicksilver through voice, posture, emotion.
One moment she’s a cruel dandy dripping with irony, the next a fragile ingénue unraveling. She changes on stage, often mid-sentence, mid-light-cue, mid-air.
The onstage video crew, dressed in black and moving like a second pulse, help her slip in and out of costumes with a choreography that’s part ninja, part magic trick.
Sarah dances. Not in the jazz-hands sense, but in a way that feels like she’s dancing with the concept of identity itself. Her physical control is as crisp as her diction. And even when she’s spinning through personas at breakneck speed, we, somehow, never get lost.
The show pulses with relevance. It’s Dorian Gray retooled for a culture obsessed with beauty filters and curated avatars.
When the lights came up, no one rushed out. Maybe because we needed a second to reenter our own bodies. After watching one person perform with such unrelenting brilliance and grace, we simply could not stand.
Broadway doesn’t often reinvent a classic like this. Sarah Snook as Dorian Gray walks that line and does so in heels.
Brilliant. Exhausting. Unforgettable.
Don’t miss it. The Portrait of Dorian Gray closes on June 29th.
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