Sarah Snook Is Finding Freedom in the 'Precise Perfectionism' of DORIAN GRAY

The Picture of Dorian Gray is not a modern story- though audiences at the Music Box Theatre might have a hard time believing that. Oscar Wilde's classic tale, written over 130 years ago, will be given fresh life on Broadway this spring when Kip Williams' daring new production opens on March 27.

"Figuring about this piece was hugely daunting. Essentially this piece is one where it's one performer telling you the story. So in all of the bits of new writing that I've done, I've had to try and maintain Oscar Wilde's voice," he explained. There are moments where I deviate from that slightly, but really that was one of the most daunting creative tasks of my life.

"I think for me, when I came back and read this novel, it brought me back to when I'd read it first when I was 15 and I did a production of The Imports of Being Earnest. I had just discovered Oscar Wilde and became obsessed with him. But it was six or seven years ago that I reread the book. It's so contemporary. It's so modern. The ideas that it's interrogating... obsession with youth, obsession with beauty, the primacy of the individual. It's like this is a tale written for 2025. I was blown away by how modern it was and that just gave me this fuel to keep going and to create this piece."

The actor at the center of the story (and taking on the play's 26 characters) is Sarah Snook, who makes her Broadway debut with this project.

"There are so many marks on the floor, so many camera angles. The specificity within which Kip requires your chin to be turned, your head to be turned, you know, it's millimeter precision! In the first instances its like, 'Oh, what? Don't box me in, mate!' But then you find, I love it because the strange kind of, maybe all actors have this, a willingness or a desire to impress the teacher, to get it right, a perfectionism that exists," Snook explained.

"And then finding the expansion inside that where I can push the boundaries, where I can invent... There's a couple of characters that are slightly different every night that don't have any prerecord attachments, so I can develop and evolve and change.

"And also just like keep mining, keep discovering, keep choosing, and finding new ways to tell the same story," Snook added. "Which is again, a testament to the writing and also to Kip."

The pair is wildly aware that this exciting new take on a classic story will bring young audiences to Broadway for the first time. "You make theatre to share it with an audience and you want everybody to come and see it," said Williams. "But when young people come and see a work and really connect with it... that's sort of like why we do it. And I think it's in part because the story feels so resonant to them, but also the way we're telling it, you know, the technology that we use. It's like they're seeing their lives on stage. And that's a really powerful thing for young audiences. 

The Picture of Dorian Gray will open at the Music Box Theatre on March 27, 2025. View the full 2025 Spring Preview!