Sarah Snook on her multifaceted efficiency in “The Image of Dorian Grey”

Sarah Snook set the file straight for us: Her final identify is pronounced “Snuke” (like nuke), not “Snook” (as in ebook or took).

On Broadway this spring, she’s neither Snuke nor Snook, however 26 utterly totally different folks. The 37-year-old Australian is chameleonic in Oscar Wilde’s “The Image of Dorian Grey,” altering accents, wigs, and gender to inform the story of a person who makes a religious discount to look eternally younger, whereas his portrait displays the hideousness of his actions.  

The present has suspense, horror, humor, and in addition loads of coronary heart. “Individuals do not usually credit score Oscar Wilde with one thing heartfelt,” I mentioned.

“Yeah, he has loads of pathos,” Snook mentioned. “I believe there’s loads of empathy for the human situation – I believe, you understand, seeing the soul as an actual factor and as part of your physique, character, religious make-up that one would possibly want to guard and take care of.”

It is a efficiency for which Snook gained an Olivier (the British theater award) in the course of the present’s run in London’s West Finish.

Oscar Wilde printed the story (his solely novel) in 1890. Victorian critics known as it “toxic” and “morally wicked.” Now, virtually a century-and-a-half later, the story feels resonant. Snook mentioned at the moment is an fascinating time to return to this story, “the place we have now such an image-based tradition and skill to assemble a visible picture to promote to anybody on-line, on Instagram. And a part of the explanation of enjoying a number of totally different characters is about selecting which masks is the appropriate masks, which is the general public/personal masks that we present of ourselves.”

After making her identify identified overseas, Snook is now beloved by American audiences as Siobhan “Shiv” Roy, the cutthroat billionaire she performed because the scion of a household empire on the TV collection “Succession.” The saltiness of her Shiv garnered Snook legions of followers, and several other awards.

However Snook initially did not wish to audition for Shiv as a result of, she says, she could not relate to her being lovely and rich. “Yeah, there was nothing in myself that I may see as, like, reflective or accessible in that character,” she mentioned.

Like Dorian Grey, Shiv is an anti-hero, and Snook’s been drawn to these difficult characters for a very long time: “I watched a ton of Disney movies after I was a child, and all I wished to be was Ursula and Scar, all of the villains, all of the individuals who had seeming extra complexity to why they had been that within the first place.”

Snook found that complexity for herself throughout one among her first performing gigs again house in Adelaide: “I used to do fairy events. It was such a very good coaching floor, ‘trigger children, man, they inform you if they are not .”

Was she heckled? “Yeah. Like, ‘Fly! Lemme see you fly! Come on! Why cannot you fly? Present us!'”

Kip Williams, the director and adapter of “Dorian Grey,” arrived on the Nationwide Institute of Dramatic Artwork in Sydney the yr that Snook had simply left. “There was this phrase round college that there was this unbelievable red-headed actress, so my radar as a director was up for Sarah from the start,” he mentioned.

Williams knew that he wished to collaborate with Snook, and felt {that a} single actor may embody all of the sides of Wilde’s legendary work. “Oscar Wilde talks about this notion that life is one grand act of theater, and that persons are at all times in a type of efficiency the place they’re both revealing or concealing elements of themselves,” Williams mentioned. “So, the type of this piece – one performer enjoying all of those 26 characters – is an expression of that concept.”

It’s with expertise that Williams illuminates humanity. He calls it “cine-theater” – combining stay efficiency with cameras, giant screens, and pre-recorded movies.

So, is it truthful to name this a one-woman present? “I believe it’s positively a one-person present,” Williams mentioned, “however additionally it is, paradoxically, an ensemble piece. The digital camera workforce and the crew are type of like her co-performers. They dance along with her on stage – actually, one second.”

A dance that feels intimately acquainted to Snook: “The sensation of a digital camera actually near you and never having that disrupt your prepare of thought or your stream, I believe that is one thing that was actually helpful in ‘Succession,’ ‘trigger we type of absorbed them as additional characters within the scene,” she mentioned.

Snook has just a few additional characters in her personal life, too. She bought married in the course of the pandemic and has a younger daughter. However because it seems, Sarah Snook has not bitten off greater than she will be able to chew.

“So, that is your Broadway debut. Is the strain off since you have already had such a profitable run?” I requested.

Snook replied, “Really, one factor that Kip mentioned on the primary day of rehearsals is, ‘You possibly can solely eat an elephant one spoonful at a time.’ ‘Yeah, certain. Okay. I will do it that approach.'”

“So that you suppose you have eaten the entire thing by now?”

“No, now I’ve gotta eat the Broadway a part of the elephant!” Snook laughed.

ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: Watch an prolonged interview with Sarah Snook 

To look at a trailer for “The Image of Dorian Grey” click on on the video participant beneath:

       
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Story produced by Julie Kracov. Editor: Lauren Barnello.