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‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ Review: Sarah Snook Dazzles in a Flashy Stage-Meets-Screen Retelling
'Succession' star Sarah Snook gives a thrillingly slippery performance in this dizzying, technically sophisticated Oscar Wilde adaptation.
Oscar Wilde himself sat in the Royal Box in the West End’s beautifully gilded Theatre Royal Haymarket in the 1890s for the premieres of his comedies “A Woman of No Importance” and “An Ideal Husband.” Given the glitteringly dangerous ideas that drive his only novel, “The Picture of Dorian Grey,” it seems more than likely he would have applauded the sheer audacity of writer-director Kip Williams’ new, dizzyingly high-tech adaptation, in which all 26 characters in the mostly-male Faustian pact are played with delicious range and wholly arresting zeal by “ Succession ” Emmy winner Sarah Snook. The most famous fact of this (im)morality tale is that while he lives a life of increasing indulgence and license, Dorian’s Grey perfect image, captured on canvas and hidden in the attic, rots. Many of them are knowingly theatrical — there are laughs from a book notable for a lack of them — and they’re delineated by an intensely floral aesthetic which, although stopping short of anything as literal as a green carnation, floods Snook’s often hilariously arch and braying characters with color.
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