‘Amazing’: Sarah Snook gets standing ovation in London’s West End

London: Some things are more precious because they don’t last long, wrote Oscar Wilde in his haunting masterpiece about Dorian Gray, a handsome young gentleman corrupted by hedonistic values.

Perhaps the Victorian playwright had an inkling of what Sarah Snook might one day bring to a one-woman adaptation of his novel, which debuted on Tuesday night (Wednesday AEDT) for a limited 14-week season at London’s 900-seat Theatre Royal Haymarket.

Sarah Snook in the production of Dorian Gray.Credit: x.com/@DorianGrayPlay

If the Australian actor, elevated to a household name through her award-winning portrayal of Shiv Roy in HBO’s Succession, was already at the top of her game, this performance will likely help catapult her into global theatre stardom.

On a rainy winter’s evening, Snook drew in her West End audience from the opening scene and held them captive for two hours. They laughed and gasped, cheered and applauded. They stood for five or so minutes at the end as Snook, who looked mentally drained and physically exhausted, waved to an adoring audience.

“Amazing, just amazing,” they yelled. It was, as several of those in attendance later remarked out loud, like nothing they’d ever seen before. Tickets are already among the hottest in town.

There were, as expected when undertaking such a giant task for the first time in a preview performance, the occasional misstep along the way. The odd fumbled line and stumble, including missing a chair entirely while attempting to sit down. But Snook’s comic brilliance, seen in her infectious laugh and smile, helped her recover with ease. Over the course of the show, she gave the audience so much that they were only too willing to give back.

This is Snook’s first appearance on the West End in eight years.Credit: x.com/@DorianGrayPlay

After conquering audiences and dazzling critics in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide, Kip Williams’ adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray is now poised to get the international acclaim it so thoroughly deserves.

Produced in London by theatre juggernaut Michael Cassel Group, it will almost certainly also be the biggest commercial success in the Sydney Theatre Company’s 45-year history. It has chosen the perfect UK home. On the walls of the third-oldest London playhouse still in use is a plaque honouring Wilde, who premiered his comedy A Woman of No Importance on the very same stage in April 1893.

It is easy to forget it is Snook, replacing fellow Australian actor Eryn Jean Norvill in the role, who plays all 26 characters. Such was her timing and outrageous facial expressions for some of her cameos, you’d be forgiven for thinking she was sharing the stage with Dame Maggie Smith, Dawn French or compatriot Magda Szubanski at their peak.

Returning to the West End for the first time in eight years, where she starred alongside Ralph Fiennes in The Master Builder, at the Old Vic, 36-year-old Snook’s accents span the length and breadth of 18th century Britain - cockney, northern, Irish and aristocrat - but a broad Australian twang proud shines through during her narration.

The South Australian’s interactions with herself as part of the multi-camera, digital screen “cine-theatre” experience never once robbed her performance of intimacy or energy. When things turn darker as Gray sells his soul in exchange for eternal beauty and forbidden pleasures in 1890s London, Snook brings an intensity and heft to the role which matches her scene-stealing performance as the cold and manipulative billionairess daughter of media tyrant, Logan Roy. Her acting is equally matched by some of her more outrageous and outlandish costume changes and wigs. Her androgynous look as Dorian himself is likely to become iconic.

“It’s a fascinating story,” Snook told the BBC when asked what drew her to the role. “What does one do with unlimited power gained through youth and beauty?”

“There’s nothing like live theatre… it’s for the soul, it enriches you”.

And there is nothing quite like this. A performance and production that the West End won’t soon forget. The only tragedy is that it won’t last forever.

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