← All Of It with Alison Stewart
All Of It with Alison Stewart
Sarah Snook Plays 26 Roles in 'The Picture of Dorian Gray'
00:22:24
Emmy-winning actor Sarah Snook discusses her athletic turn as 26 different characters in "The Picture of Dorian Gray."
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- [00:00]
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Alison Stewart
This is all of it. I'm Alison Stewart live from the WNYC studios in soho. Thank you for spending part of your day with us. I'm really grateful that you are here on today's show. Incoming poet in residence for the Guggenheim, Tracy Brimhall joins us to talk about poetry in this moment and to read some of her work. And we'll take your calls. A new documentary called Free for the Public Library shows how libraries have become an essential good and come under political fire. We'll speak to the film's directors. That's our plan. So let's get this started with Snara Snook in the Portrait of Dorian Gray, which the New York Times calls a triumph. Sarah Snook plays 26K characters in the Broadway play the Portrait of Dorian Gray. That's enough to make you think, wow, that's amazing. But the execution of the nearly 2 hour 60,000 word play is intricate. There are five camera folks, huge screens, small screens, diorama shaped sets, trips through the back of the stage, pre recorded pieces, video wizardry and some fine acting from Sarah. Conceived of by Kip Williams. The story of a postmodern take on Oscar Wilde's tale of a beautiful young man, Dorian, who makes a wish to retain his youth while a portrait of him ages in the attic, not just with time, but with each act of his depravity. It's enough to make Dorian go insane. And spoiler alert, he does. The show took the West End of London by storm. It opened on Broadway in March to excellent reviews. We are very happy to have Sarah Snope join us now. Hi, Sarah. Hi.
- [02:26]
Sarah Snook
How you doing?
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Alison Stewart
I'm doing great. So think about Succession. It wrapped up in May of 2023. Shiv laid her hand very limply on Toms in the back of the limousine. The show had wrapped earlier, obviously, but what did you want to do in those days after Succession?
- [02:43]
Sarah Snook
Oh, you know, I, I, I was pregnant. I just had a baby in April. Actually, my daughter's birthday is today and I wanted to lie down, but not so fast. Had to get 60,000 words to do this one woman show. And a crazy endeavor.
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Alison Stewart
Oh, it's her birthday well, happy birthday. That's exciting.
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Sarah Snook
Yeah, I think.
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Alison Stewart
What did you think your next gig would be? Or are you just looking to take a break at the time?
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Sarah Snook
Yeah, definitely just looking to take a break, I think, and did not suspect that this could possibly be my next gig playing 26 roles on West End and then, you know, to hope, fingers crossed, to be able to transfer to Broadway as well. It's a dream come true really.
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Alison Stewart
Kip Williams, the director and the adapter behind this production of Dorian Gray, said he heard about you while you were in school. He heard there was this great red headed actor who he should work with at some point. When did you first hear of or meet Kip Williams?
- [03:45]
Sarah Snook
Well, he was the artistic director of Sydney Theatre Company when I first did a show there called St. Joan in 2018. I was part of his first season that he scheduled. And so we, we properly kind of, I guess properly crossed paths then, but we knew of each other at drama school and, and he did the directing stream and I did the acting stream and we'd always since then wanted to work together.
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Alison Stewart
When he approached you about the Portrait of Dorian Gray, what was the pitch?
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Sarah Snook
Oh, you know, we just, we actually talk, we connect really well on, on dramaturgy and themes and, and philosophy and, and I think that's part of what has driven us and draw to being in this industry in the, in the arts. And we really just talked about the themes of the show for maybe two or three hours. And then I've been sent the archival recording of when he performed, when, when he presented the show with a different performer in, in Australia. And I couldn't bring myself to watch it. I, I watched maybe the first minute or two, but then I, I think I instinctively knew I wanted to do it and so then had to turn it off because I didn't want to, I didn't want to get too many, too many different ideas from, from being able to have, have the discovery of being my own.
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Alison Stewart
What about this seemed cool to you to do given that you just given birth to your, your child.
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Sarah Snook
You could even, I mean, 26, 26 roles, you mean? Kidding me? It's like doing 26 different characters and, and the make like indulging in the make believe of the world of, of that Kib has created through the novel of, of Dorian Gray that, you know, the novel that Oscar wrote is such an incredible, deeply rich novel with so many brilliant ideas inside. To be able to play inside that and play all of the characters is such a, such a gift.
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Alison Stewart
When you first read Oscar Wilde's work. You said that you talked to Kip about it for two or three hours. What stood out about that story for you?
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Sarah Snook
I think just the relevance, really where we are now is where Oscar kind of predicted we might be like back in Victorian times. You know, the book is. Is over 100 years old. And I think we find ourselves in a similar position in this perhaps more manic, chaotic version of. Of the expression of individual in the Victorian times, where the. The. The question of. Of if. If one soul is good or bad and how that is expressed on the outside of a person and whether the indulgence of how one looks and the pursuit of beauty, what that can do to our internal mechanisms and machinations.
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Alison Stewart
When Kip Williams adapted this work, he adapted it with choreography, camera work, live editing, live theater. When you were in the rehearsal space for the Picture of Dorian Gray, what was something that you had to work on that you really hadn't had to work on before?
- [07:03]
Sarah Snook
What do you know what the. Really, the gift of that, to be honest, was coming to the rehearsal space, being six months postpartum, and being told where to stand and what to say and which way to look. There was like, particular kind of choreography to this piece that was already set that I had to work within. And where previously I might have been more like, oh, I want to do my own thing, I want to discover this, or like, you know, let's find it together. This. This way of doing it at that particular time in my life was like, great, tell me where to stand and what's line to say when I get here. It was. It was very structured in that way. And then once the structure was set, there was. It was places. Places to expand inside that format. But, yeah, that was. That was new.
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Alison Stewart
I was going to ask, you know, the structure. It's kind of like playing music. You have to know the notes before you can play jazz, right?
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Sarah Snook
Yeah, yeah.
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Alison Stewart
So you have the structure. You know where to stand, you know where the lighting is going to be. What did that do for you creatively?
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Sarah Snook
Well, it is like saying jazz there. It's very similar to jazz in that way and that, like, it has to be. There is a formality to it. There is certain specificity to where I have to be in the. The space in which I have to say this line. But within that space, as long as I get the timing right, I can. I can jazz it up. I can. I can, you know, put a little bit more emphasis on this part of the sentence and then find a new thought in this Part of the sentence. But if I've done that too slow at the beginning, I speed it up by the end.
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Alison Stewart
For people who haven't seen you, you perform with yourself. You're on screens quite often. What did you learn playing against yourself?
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Sarah Snook
Well, I guess learning to really activate the imagination because it's the same every night. In some ways my performance live on stage can be different, but the prerecorded is set. So I have to find new ways to find that actor on stage, which is interesting. You know, I have to find new ways to receive what they are saying.
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Alison Stewart
What was it like? What did you observe about yourself as an actor looking at the pre records?
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Sarah Snook
Oh, you know, there are choices now that I go, oh God, I would have. Why didn't I lean on that word more and lob that up for the next line better? Or I really could have investigated that thought better. But we, you know, we had a very short rehearsal period before the pre record. We had two weeks before we started doing that, so really had to get it set.
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Alison Stewart
Only two weeks?
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Sarah Snook
Yeah, yeah.
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Alison Stewart
This is sounding rougher the more you talk about.
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Sarah Snook
Just sounds bonkers to say it that way, but yeah. And we only shot. We did the prerecorded in a week and a half, which is just a monumental effort of crew and makeup artists and, well, one particular makeup artist, Lauren Priori. Incredible work.
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Alison Stewart
I'm talking to Sarah Snook. The name of the show is the Picture of Dorian Gray at the Music box theater until June 15th. You play all 26 speaking parts, but you do have castmates, the camera operators. Would you like to give them a shout out?
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Sarah Snook
Oh, absolutely. Oh, my goodness. They are so integral and necessary to the performance of this show. This is billed as a one woman show, but it is not. It is an ensemble performance with the camera crew cast being both protagonists as well as antagonists. There are. There are moments where they. Are they my scene partners and then moments where they. They operate as if they are kind of a swarm or a hive against. And it's all great. It's such a great way to share energy on stage.
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Alison Stewart
Yeah, it's interesting because in one of the pivotal scenes, you're on stage and your image is on the five screens, but the camera operators have you sort of penned in.
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Sarah Snook
Yeah, yeah, they've got me pinned. Yeah.
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Alison Stewart
Is that part of the choreography of it?
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Sarah Snook
It is, yeah. It's quite a specific choreography too because at the same time the stage manager is calling the show. She's doing basically live editing a two hour feature film every Night. And there are particular words that I have to turn my head on and particular moments that the camera crew have to be ready for. And yet also at the same time they are doing, they are performing a role, they're acting as well.
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Alison Stewart
Watching you on the big screen. It's really interesting because as you go from role to role, your eyes change shape. They truly do. When you go from role to role.
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Sarah Snook
It's funny.
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Alison Stewart
How much during the rehearsal stage did you spend in front of a mirror, if at all, figuring out how the character behaves?
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Sarah Snook
Yeah, I didn't do any mirror work actually, now that I think about it. But I did do lots of like vocal work of where to put, where to put the sound of the character, whether they're at the front of the mouth, on the gum ridge or on the teeth, or where does it sit in the, in the side of the mouth or where is the, what's the tick of this particular character? Because an audience needs to know, okay, that's who we're looking at. We don't have a costume yet to differentiate, but we need to find something that is essential to that person that we know that that's Lord Henry or that's Basil. So yeah, in some ways, because of the, the short nature of the rehearsal period, it was make a choice and sit behind it and yeah, it's, it served us well in the end.
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Alison Stewart
Yeah, it's interesting when the play starts, we meet young Dorian and this sort of like lounge lizard like Lord Henry and then sort of shy Basil who paints the ill fated portrait. But it's really important that. That first five or ten minutes of the show. Why is that first five or ten minutes really important for the audience?
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Sarah Snook
Well, the audience need to understand the setup, I suppose. And part of that particular way of starting the show in. Well, part of the reason of starting the way in this particular show in this particular way is that Oscar Wilde once said that the Portrait of Dorian Gray, the Picture of Dorian Gray was, was somewhat not autobiographical, but there were essences of him in there. There was Basil Hallwood is, is how he saw himself. Lord Henry is how the society saw him. And Dorian is perhaps who he would want to be in other ages. And that was perhaps a veiled reference to his desire of wanting to be freely homosexual and out in the world as much as it was perhaps wanting to be an image of beauty and love and having that freedom and youth.
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Alison Stewart
Which character came to you easily?
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Sarah Snook
I hate to say that Lord Henry came to me. Isn't that weird? I think, I think you know, I used to watch lots of Disney films growing up, and there's a kind of the villainous sort of part act, you know, bit of the mustache twirling. I don't know.
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Alison Stewart
Yeah.
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Sarah Snook
Something about, like a bit of the scar in him, like from Lion King, and. And also something about. There's something there just. Yeah. A bit of a starch dwelling. But, you know, I listened to, like, lots of audiobooks growing up, like Roald Dahl's Revolting Rhymes and. And that kind of British aristocratic voice just seemed. I sat with that easy. Yeah.
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Alison Stewart
The costumes. Is it Marg Howell? Am I pronouncing it correctly?
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Sarah Snook
Yeah, Marg. Yeah.
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Alison Stewart
How do they help you as an actor? Because they become more elaborate as the show goes on.
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Sarah Snook
Well, they do. I mean, they certainly help in the way that they hinder in some ways. I am wearing by the end of the show, I think, two corsets, one jumpsuit, a shirt, a blazer and a winter coat, which, as it gets warmer in season, it's going to get hotter on stage. But that is something that's quite useful in some ways to work with because it's this piling on of excess. It's a material representation of all the. All the things that Dorian has acquired and in the way that they weigh them down. Weigh him down as well.
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Alison Stewart
I think you mentioned this earlier, but who does the makeup for the show? Because initially you were very, very close up.
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Sarah Snook
Yes, well, the makeup for the show live. My makeup, I do myself. But when we did the pre record, Loren Prairietti did. She did the makeup for the prosthetics and the sort of more elaborate, different cast character makeup.
- [15:34]
Alison Stewart
We're talking to Sarah Schnook. The name of the show is the Picture of Dorian Gray. It's up until June 15th. When you're playing Dorian, when you're thinking about Dorian, does he think about his youth before the portrait is made?
- [15:49]
Sarah Snook
Oh, yeah, definitely. I think when Lord Henry does that speech to him saying that youth is the only thing worth having and that. I think it's. It's saying it to a person who's just come out, just. Just come into their personhood. Their. Their grandfather has probably recently passed away and left him all this money, and he's been kind of locked away in this. In this very strict household. And here he is for the first time, bursting onto the scene of society. And here's an older man telling him, you better make use of it, because that's going to be gone next season is just this attitude of. Of. Of scarcity. And I think he. Yeah. Genuinely, there's a genuine fear that he is going to lose his youth and beauty and vitality and become maybe perhaps become like his grandfather was, that he's sort of casually allude. Well, that Mrs. Leaf alludes to.
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Alison Stewart
As we've been thinking about this show, I started thinking about art around aging, the substance, even the sinners, you know, vampires. Retaining your youth. Right.
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Sarah Snook
Yeah, yeah.
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Alison Stewart
And I was wondering about the portrait, and I kept thinking, does the portrait show him aging or does it just show his sort of decrepitude of spirit?
- [17:04]
Sarah Snook
I think it's all. I think it does show him aging and shows him aging faster than he otherwise perhaps would have and shows. Yeah. The decrepitude of his spirit and soul, just the. How it's being ravaged by his choices. And I think that's really confronting for him to see. And then the question that's constantly being posed is, am I a good person? Am I a worthwhile person? Am I. Do I have a good soul? And seeing the representation of that and knowing the truth of it is something that wears too hard on him.
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Alison Stewart
You've had to deal with a Broadway audience for the first time, and they're a little more openly engaged with a performance.
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Sarah Snook
Yeah, absolutely. I love. Yeah. Broadway audiences are great. They're really engaged. They're willing to laugh, ready to laugh. They're so generous with their applause and welcoming. It's been a wonderful experience.
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Alison Stewart
Have you had to change the show much since London?
- [18:01]
Sarah Snook
No, not in a had to kind of way. There's a few things we wanted to alter and develop, and there's a few things that Kip and I just discovered newly as we were performing it. Like, oh, actually, there's some more to be found in this area that we weren't really thinking about before, which has been really exciting and sort of testament to the quality and the greatness of Oscar's original text is. It's just so rich. It's just so much to be found.
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Alison Stewart
We got a text from a listener. It says, hello. We saw the show a few weeks ago and was blown away by not only the coordination of the production picture book perfect. But also Ms. Snook's performance. Monstrous. Some of the best Broadway I've seen in a while.
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Sarah Snook
I love that Monstrous is used as a compliment, honestly. Right.
- [18:51]
Alison Stewart
That's amazing.
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Sarah Snook
Yeah.
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Alison Stewart
Do you think of it as sort of a monstrous performance?
- [19:00]
Sarah Snook
I mean, it's certainly. The task is monstrous. And there is something of the monster. Yeah. That comes out in Darien. I think, by the End and the. That's definitely calls to the gothic nature of the novel. And, and what these sort of high, high questions are of, of souls and of goodness and of. And of beauty. Those are, those are gothic questions. You know, they're, they feel very big.
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Alison Stewart
This is a nuts and bolts question. What happens when something goes wrong with the technology?
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Sarah Snook
You just got to deal with it. You got to cover it. You got to deal with it. You got to, you know, it depends on what go. It doesn't happen very often, but if, if something does go wrong, it depends what it is. Sometimes the audience won't know, and sometimes in London, we had a one or two show stops where we had to call stop to the show. And, and in some way, you know, the, the, the, the benefit of doing this kind of show, which always has a little bit of a kind of wink out to the audience. Orlando, Sally Potter's film Orlando was a big reference for Kip, where Tilda Swinton is able to break the fourth wall with looking directly down the lens of the camera. And, and I have the ability to do that to interact with the audience or down the lens of the camera or the kind of like always peeking out from behind the curtain is happening. And so if something does go wrong, which it hasn't yet in New York, majorly, there will be a. There'll be an interaction with the audience that lets them know that everything's okay and we can continue going. The whole thing's a game. The whole thing's a performance.
- [20:36]
Alison Stewart
I've wondered if you've talked to, I think it's Tom Francis over at Sunset Boulevard about using the camera as part of your performance. You know, he goes out of the theater and across down Shubert Alle. Walking through areas. Have you talked to other actors who've used this kind of performance before?
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Sarah Snook
No, I haven't. I haven't yet. No, I haven't had the opportunity to. It'd be quite interesting to see what their experience is of it. Yeah, it's quite different to performing with just a person across from you.
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Alison Stewart
This show does not go on without you. Right. There are no understudies.
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Sarah Snook
No understudies. Oh, no, no, no. Sixteen weeks old, me.
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Alison Stewart
So what are you doing to keep yourself healthy? Not radio interviews. So thank you for being on. I appreciate it.
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Sarah Snook
No, I, I'm just living pretty monkishly aesthetically. Not not drinking if I can help it. Well, no, not just not drinking and no caffeine if I can help it. And trying to get to bed early and get some good sleep. You know, I think that's necessary with a toddler anyway.
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Alison Stewart
That's true.
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Sarah Snook
And yeah, I it would be too difficult just in terms of the requirements on voice for this show and physical requirements, resting when I and being good when I otherwise I'm not resting.
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Alison Stewart
What do you have to do? What's the pep talk that you give yourself on the day when maybe you don't feel like doing it, but you have to do it?
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Sarah Snook
Do you know what? My husband said this to me and I really valued it, is that invariably there is one person in the audience who has either flown from Brazil or flown from Argentina or flown from somewhere they've made. It's been on their calendar for a long time. So for you to turn up today and not want to do it, it's not in there. They are there wanting you to show them a great show and just that one person in the audience who may have a great night, then that's the person to do it for.
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Alison Stewart
Sarah Snook is in the Picture of Dorian Gray at the Music box theater until June 15th. Sarah, thanks for making the time today. We really appreciate it.
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Sarah Snook
Not a problem. Thanks for having me on. Great to chat.
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Ira Flatow
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