Denzel Washington’s ‘Othello’ breaks Broadway box office record
“Othello,” now playing on Broadway and starring Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal, achieved a weekly gross of more than $2.8 million.
Cheddar
NEW YORK — One woman, two hours and 26 wildly eccentric characters.
In “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” which opened March 27 at the Music Box Theatre, Sarah Snook pulls off nothing short of a Herculean feat. The Emmy winner, who brought steely ambition to Shiv Roy on HBO’s “Succession,” is tasked not only with slipping in and out of multiple roles on a dime, plucking from a mélange of wigs, costumes, voices and mannerisms. But she is also continuously asked to act against herself, performing entire scenes with as many as five or six different prerecorded selves, which are strikingly projected onto massive screens.
If your head is already spinning, then buckle up. In director Kip Williams’ audacious, gender-bent adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s 1890 novel, a small army of camera operators essentially shoot a movie in real time. The effect is both staggeringly impressive and exhaustingly relentless.
As in Wilde’s book, the play follows a beautiful but vain young man named Dorian Gray, who commissions a portrait from the infatuated artist Basil Hallward. Fearing he will one day lose his comely features, Dorian makes the rash decision to sell his soul to the devil, so that his portrait may fade and age while he remains boyish. But as it goes with any Faustian bargain, Dorian’s vicious descent into egomania comes with a fatal price.
Like recent movies “A Different Man” and “The Substance,” Williams’ production ingeniously ushers Wilde’s parable into the modern age. As Dorian’s life becomes an incessant bacchanal, Snook spends much of her time mugging and narrating directly into a smartphone screen, which is seamlessly projected onto a wall behind her. At one point, the actress snaps a selfie with the theater audience, which she feverishly edits into a Daliesque distortion as she monologues about Dorian’s self-loathing and obsession.
In the play’s most riveting scene, Snook speaks straight to the camera as Dorian whips between a glossy Facetune filter and his normal visage, taking “monstrous and terrible delight” in the wrinkles etched across his mouth and forehead. For anyone who’s ever spent hours examining every pore and dimple on one’s body, it’s a recognizably squirmy moment performed with gleeful dexterity by Snook.
But as can be the case with such high-concept stagings, Williams’ gimmick eventually runs out of gas, pummeling theatergoers with every new screen, filter and thumping club track that’s unspooled over two intermission-less hours. Some sequences – including a stagnant chase through the forest – are rendered almost entirely through prerecorded video, leaving you to question whether you’ve somehow wandered into the AMC down the block.
More frustratingly, Snook’s face is frequently obscured by walls or cameras moving in front of her, and much of the action takes place far upstage. As a result, you may often find your eyes fixated on the enormous screens planted in front of you, rather than the flesh-and-blood human being who’s performing her heart out mere feet away.
Despite the show’s overreliance on whiz-bang technology, Snook is never anything less than jaw-dropping. The Australian actress tackles the prodigious task at hand with breathtaking precision, believably engaging in verbose conversations with her digitalized selves, and never missing a beat as she plays to each and every camera that’s ceaselessly roving and whirring around her.
But it’s a performance that goes far beyond mere technical prowess, bursting with mischief and regret and crippling loneliness, as Dorian is slowly undone by his hubris. And it cannot be overstated just how funny Snook is: A puppet-show scene, in which she plays a confoundingly miscast Juliet, is sidesplitting, while a preening lip sync to “Gorgeous” from “The Apple Tree” near brought us to tears with joy.
Moments such as those make you wonder just how exhilarating Snook might be without all the mishegoss Williams throws her way. This “Dorian Gray” drives home the perils of living life through an Instagram filter, but seldom takes a breath long enough to heed its own warning.
“The Picture of Dorian Gray” is now playing at the Music Box Theatre (239 W. 45th Street) through June 15, 2025.
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