Succession’s Sarah Snook returns to the London stage, and possibly Broadway, for an adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, a dark tale of a portrait that grows old while its subject remains forever young.
The Emmy-nominated actress will have the mammoth task of playing all 26 characters in Dorian Gray when it opens at the Theater Royal Haymarket in London’s West End in January 2024 for a limited 12-week run.
It is a colossal undertaking for a solo artist who will have to be on stage for two hours without an interval.
The show was conceived by Kip Williams, the artistic director of Australia’s famous Sydney Theater Company. It premiered in Sydney with actress Eryn Jean Norvill creating the role, or parts, because there are 26 of them.
Those involved have described the show as “cinema-theatre”.
Snook will begin preparation and rehearsals in the fall and will be asked to film characters and then interact with them on stage. I haven’t seen it, so I can’t fully explain it, but those who saw the production in Sydney raved about it, describing a screen-filled set with the actor on the boards talking to images of themselves dresses of different characters.
Snook deservedly won praise for his performance as the scheming Shiv Roy on the HBO drama Succession, which ended its four seasons in May. Few know that she is also an excellent theater performer. A few years ago I caught her in a production of Ibsen’s The Master Builder opposite Ralph Fiennes at the Old Vic.
Meanwhile, Jeremy Strong, who played older brother Kendall Roy, will direct a revival of Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People on Broadway, also in early 2024, adapted by Amy Herzog and directed by Sam Gold.
Other members of the fictional Roy family also head to theater shows:
Brian Cox, who played patriarch Logan Roy, will star opposite Patricia Clarkson in Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night which runs at London’s Wyndham’s Theater from March 19 to June 8. It has already sold 75 percent of its seats; it’s a phenomenal advance sale, even more so for a four-act marathon drama.
Harriet Walter, Logan’s ex-wife and Waystar shareholder Lady Caroline (Shiv’s mother) in Succession, is also revisiting the classics. He will headline a revival of Federico García Lorca’s The House of Bernardo Alba at the Lyttelton House at the National Theater from November. It is based on an adaptation by Alice Birch.
All we need now is for Kieran Culkin to star in a Greek tragedy about a boy with mummy problems, and the Roy Theater Company will be complete.
The London production of The Picture of Dorian Gray is costing a bundle and it took a hot star to help it recover.
Snook is that star; many believe that the fourth season of Succession belonged to him. My guess is that once the tickets go on sale, it will beat “father” Brian Cox at the box office.
Fascinating, when you think about it, that Snook chose to make Dorian Gray, a prime example of late-Victorian Gothic fiction that explored dark desires and forbidden pleasures in 1890s London.
In part, Succession also studied devotion to decadence and sensual pleasures.
If the show opens in London, I understand it will go to Broadway for a season. However, any transfer would depend on Snook and her family — she recently announced the birth of her first child.
Producers Michael Cassel and Adam Kenwright have contracted the play to run at the Haymarket from 23 January to 13 April.
