The Picture of Dorian Gray review: Sarah Snook dazzles in a take in Wilde’s classic that’s full of surprises

Sarah Snook’s magnified face looms over the Haymarket’s gilded stage on a vast screen, her lips tremulous, each delicate line beneath her eyes blown up till they’re as long as a West End theatre’s toilet queue. At first, her solo attempt on Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray seems like a straightforward thing: a display of acting prowess that sees the Succession star switching between 26 roles, and another exercise in vulnerability after her much-loved telly role as dowdy, deluded Shiv Roy. But Williams literally drags out that subtext and brings it to the front of the stage, using ingenious pre-recorded footage to show Dorian plunging into glitter-curtained gay clubs in place of the original novel’s opium dens, energised by a pulsing Donna Summer soundtrack. The stage becomes a hall of mirrors, full of dozens of iterations of Snook’s face appearing above sumptuous velvet gowns, frilled aprons or starched collars furnished by the teeming imagination of designer Marg Horwell.