Culture Society, Identity and Belonging
Sarah Snook’s one-woman version of Oscar Wilde’s dark morality tale dazzles with a barrage of screens and trick footage – but it’s the curious intimacy of the Succession star that carries the piece. She performs in close-up to teams of live film crews moving around the stage, switching between the devilish Sir Henry, tormented artist Basil, doomed actress Sylvia Vain and her thuggish brother. Her Dorian begins as an angel, his face pressed into the lens, and his journey to tortured murderer uses smartphone filters to bring influencer culture into Victorian narcissism. The book is stuffed with Wilde’s finest epigrams but inevitably, on a stage rammed with technology and Snook’s Falstaffian alter egos, Wilde’s homoerotic hedonism is played a little too much for laughs. Alongside Stranger Things, Vanya et al, it’s a further sign that London’s West End is at its most adventurous for years.