One Woman Show

In the new Broadway production of The Picture of Dorian Gray, Sarah Snook, best known for dishing out barbs as Shiv Roy on Succession, plays the title character, the vain Victorian fuckboy who wishes that only his portrait would grow old while he remains forever young. That, in itself, is a feat: a woman taking on a canonically male role. But Snook doesn't stop there. She also plays 25 other roles, male and female, over the course of two hours (with no intermission), acting entirely opposite herself.

What unfolds is a mindblowing theatrical experience that updates Dorian for the 21st century, while making Oscar Wilde’s classic story feel more relevant than ever. It is, after all, about self-obsession, and we live in a self-obsessed age.

"I think for audience members, whether they identify as female or male or nonbinary, there is a sense in which everybody can see themselves within Dorian and the kind of moral compromise that Dorian finds themselves tangled up within becomes this universal compromise that we are all capable of finding ourselves within," director Kip Williams tells Marie Claire.

So how does Snook do it? In part by sheer acting talent, of course. (Snook won an Olivier in London for her performance; prior to that the show played in Australia and New Zealand with other leads.) The 37-year-old, who is the third actress to appear in the production, modulates her voice depending on whether she's playing the initially bright-eyed Dorian or his tragic love interest, Sibyl Vane. She changes her body language to match whatever persona she’s inhabiting. But to fully transform, she also relies on 19 costume changes, a host of wigs, six LED screens, and 15 total crew members, some of whom are wielding cameras on stage to capture her at different angles.

Take, for instance, a bravura dinner party sequence. We watch as stagehands, dressed in nondescript black clothing, turn her from Dorian into the haughty Lord Henry, deftly applying a mustache and a brown wig. Then Snook is seated at a table with five other people whom she also plays: the elderly Lady Agatha dressed in pearls; a duchess holding a pug; and a "rotund" member of parliament. The characters who are not Lord Henry have been pre-recorded. But still the conversation between a live Snook/Lord Henry and her digital counterparts flows almost unnervingly freely. In other moments of the play, Snook is on stage while the screens show every facet of her face in tight close up, a metaphor for the fracturing of self.

The task of figuring out how Dorian would evolve from innocent naif into soulless party boy—as well as everyone else—fell to scenic and costume designer Marg Horwell. With the show now in previews in New York, Horwell, whose award-winning work also includes a production of Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, walked us through her complicated process.

Marie Claire: How did you think about gender when creating Dorian's look?

Marg Howell: We spent a long time [with Sarah and each performer that has played Dorian] trying to find how they looked best as a man, but without denying something inherent about themselves. So it didn't kind of turn into something that was overly costumey.

There's fun kind of camp things that are happening as well. But to find a version of Dorian that is so obsessed with aesthetics and also doesn't deny [the actors'] inherent femininity or their inherent kind of physical mannerisms is the great thing. And the weird thing is you find that they feel more masculine wearing heels than they did flats. Actually we've cinched waists in quite a bit…that very feminine shape that was in fashion at the time. Then mixing it with contemporary versions of gender-fluid fashion. So it really does feel like something that spanned a century.

MC: How did you figure out Dorian's hair?

MH: So the first Dorian is quite cherubic with curls and is more innocent, but he also has that kind of classic, romantic heartthrob look with sideburns as well. But then as he becomes more invested in aesthetics or as he kind of becomes more enamored with his own image, it becomes more styled and more fashion-y. I got obsessed with the model Lucky Blue Smith. So lots of people say, "Oh, it's very Elvis." But actually, all of it is that Lucky Blue kind of tall, dirty, greasy blonde, great style.

MC: There is a floral motif running through the show. Why was that important to you?

MH: In the book, he goes into the garden and describes flowers just in great detail for a long time. And [there is] the mythology around Oscar Wilde that he carried a carnation. But the great thing I think about flowers on stage is that they're not real. So there's something about artifice or the kind of saccharine falseness of them that I think is really important. We started with something that felt a bit more real or felt a little more honest. And then throughout the show it evolves. Then it becomes a very sickly motif by the end.

MC: How did you think about how the costumes and sets were going to be captured by the videographers?

MH: Theater wigs are so different to film wigs in terms of how closely you can interrogate them and how quickly they can go on. Because we're doing wig changes live for her, which are two seconds or something, it's like a dance. You have to be really careful about what you can see or how that's styled to be able to make sure that we don't expose too much. It's going to be a 360-degree set because a lot of stuff is seen from the back. You are aware of how exposed everything is. There's a joy in that as well because all of our fabrics are kind of gorgeous, textured slightly, quite subtle. Sometimes [on camera] you can see the texture between silk and wool really close up and see Sarah's face so close up. It's about delighting in the detail of it rather than making sure that we're not found out.

[For wigs] you throw it off and then have to get it on matching an on-screen image, which is prerecorded. So we've had to design it in a way that is forgiving or precise so that it doesn't look so disheveled live. And because we had to shoot it before, obviously, we got into the theater, you have to make sure that we can make the costume changes in time because often they're over text. So she'll be speaking whilst people are changing her shoes, whilst people are changing things, and there's a camera circling her. And then the word will happen, wig, sideburns. So it has to kind of finish on a line.

And so to make sure that we go, "Well, can we do it in 20 seconds total or can we do it in 12 seconds total?" We've got to make sure that it can happen before we put it on film. Otherwise, we don't know that we can replicate exactly what we've done. So the early days, [it was] just terrifying. Because when we first put something on film, [we were] so scared of everything just to make sure it's possible to make sure that we're not committing to something that we can't fulfill live.

MC: What is the training process for the crew in terms of doing these costume changes?

MH: It's something that I think is a really specific skill that we've found it difficult to find the right people. It's so in front of everybody. It is like choreography, but it also has to be about a relationship with a performer where they trust you completely that you can be holding their shoe open and while they're talking, they know that you're going to be there when they put their foot down. And there's some changes that you don't see on stage because she's speaking to us and you can't see parts of her body that people are changing while she's speaking. So our wig person, [Nick Eynaud], who we're lucky to have in New York, who's done Australia and has done London has a great rapport with Sarah. There's a code, kind of like, "If I'm not ready..." She has to know that she's ready and then he's ready and go, “we're good.”

MC: Beyond Dorian, was there another character that was particularly difficult to crack aesthetically?

MH: There's a couple of characters who age. Lord Henry, we see him young and old, and we see the duchess a couple of times young and old. But they were pretty exciting to make because, again, by the time we're in that artificial, sickly country house, everybody's getting Botox and feels like they're denying their age. Sybil is a tricky character because I think that she can be two-dimensional and facile. But in the end, I leaned into the artifice of her as well, because we get to see her performing Juliet. I leaned into her looking like a Victorian doll with perfect ringlets and too much hair and all smiles. And then we see her backstage where she starts to take off her wig, and she's more of a real person. She was tricky to know how to pitch, and I guess that's a bit of a disappointing thing to have to admit that the women are harder.

But [as Sibyl] we've got her in a costume that's like a cupcake, and it's all tulle. It's her Juliet costume, so she's got a stab wound in her stomach that's all beaded red beads. And she's got red gloves that's all red beads like it's the beads of her blood when she's killed herself. It's actually one of my favorite costumes now because it's tiny, you only catch it for a little moment, but I think it's a silly kind of theatrical gesture that is making light or making ornament out of her death. It's so bedazzled. She looks so fabulous.

MC: How are social media filters used in the show?

MH: One of the scenes that a lot of people have asked if it's pre-recorded is actually live manipulation. It’s when Sarah takes a photo live. And then while she is talking to us in a monologue, augments her face. I think one of the filters is called "baby." It's one of those things where you just look so perfect. [Also] in the opium den, she plays many people in a kind of hedonistic, loud environment. There [are multiple] people with iPhones, and if she's looking at this one, she looks like someone else.

MC: Were there any other key reference points for you in terms of designing and the aesthetic?

MH: The earlier [Dorian] looks I got really inspired by Ann Demeulemeester and the way that she made tops that had kind of lacings and things that were left undone or that trailed behind. Then I got quite obsessed with seeing suspender clips that you could see sticking out or underneath her jacket. It felt like there were layers or the underwear was kind of peeking out. There was some great Maison Margiela stuff that really felt like it was about cutting things up and putting them back together or that you would see the underlayer of things.

Actually, I was so inspired by the most recent collection where it was those shorts over those sheer skirts, but obviously, we made the show before that. But it felt exciting. It was looking at corsetry over the top of suiting.

MC: What did you find thematically relevant about designing for someone who was a woman playing a canonically male character?

MH: What we've done with Sarah, especially, is embrace her more traditionally feminine shape. And I don't know whether it's about bravado or if it's about posture—but physically, she's incredibly nuanced in terms of how she'll shift from one to the other. We have really changed how we approach those characters. In a photograph, I think she looks more feminine than masculine if you got rid of the context, but on stage it is very convincing as a very kind of masculine thing.

I think something that I learned is that all of those elements are very unexpected as to what denotes feminine, masculine or what can kind of tread that middle line. But I think there's something amazing about a character who is investigating excess or looking at how they are perceived in the world, if that is actually not who they inherently are. So it isn't actually about finding your true self, it is about finding something that you have manufactured or finding something that is other than yourself. There's something inherently great about that premise, I think.