NEW YORK—Time is running out to catch two of New York City’s most high-profile and starry stage productions featuring drag excellence.
The Picture of Dorian Gray is now playing a limited engagement at Broadway’s Music Box Theatre through June 29. It stars Emmy and Golden Globe winner Sarah Snook of HBO Succession fame as she takes on 26 different roles (mostly male) in director/playwright Kip Williams’ high-tech adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s iconic 1890 queer novel.
Meanwhile, the New York premiere of Drag: The Musical closes on April 27 (it started previews off-Broadway in the basement of New World Stages back in September 2024). No doubt many fans of the reality TV series RuPaul’s Drag Race are intrigued because Drag: The Musical stars such beloved drag queen alumni like Jujubee, Luxx Noir London, Jan Sport and the musical’s co-author, Justin Andrew Honard (aka Alaska Thunderf*ck).
As excited as I was to see these two shows and be in the same room with all these stars, I have to admit that elements of both productions let me down. In one case there was a noticeable technological glitch, while the other largely had to do with the show’s undercooked and indecisive script.
After originating in 2020 at Sydney Theatre Company in a production built around actress Eryn Jean Norvill, The Picture of Dorian Gray then transferred to London’s West End in 2024 with another Aussie, Sarah Snook, taking on all the play’s characters. After seeing Snook’s non-stop, two-hour marathon performance on Broadway, it’s understandable why she won the Olivier Award in the U.K. last year for Best Actress in a Play. It’s a safe bet that Snook is a frontrunner for the Tony Award this season, too.
But Snook doesn’t do it entirely alone. She’s supported by a skilled cadre of five onstage and synchronized camera operators/dressers/makeup artists (clew, Luka Kain, Natalie Rich, Benjamin Sheen and Dara Woo) who follow and frame Snook to give her loads of successful assistance. And with the large amount of technology involved in the show, you can bet there’s a mass of backstage crew working hard, too.
The plot of The Picture of Dorian Gray is famously about the amazingly handsome and deviously cruel title character who possesses a magical oil-painting portrait that continually ages while he himself remains youthful and outwardly unmarred by his many, many vices. It’s very clear that director/adapter Williams wanted to show how relevant Wilde’s novel is for today as technology and social media allow for people to curate or create idealized/phony outward surfaces of their lives online.
Which is why Snook’s performance is almost always aimed toward the camera lenses pointed at her rather than playing outward to the live theater audience. With so much of our lives dominated by video screens, the live-relay digital projected images take more precedence onstage than the person in real life—especially in this show.
While some may find the dominance of these filming techniques to be frustrating, I was more enchanted. It was fascinating to see how Snook acted with prerecorded versions of herself playing multiple characters amid the shifting fragments of sets and costumes created by designer Marg Horwell and the focused lighting design of Nick Schlieper.
Though ostensibly set in the Victorian era, The Picture of Dorian Gray as re-imagined by Williams and his production team all lean into updating key moments in the material to reflect the excesses of today (it’s particularly noticeable in the sound design and compositions selected by Clemence Williams which encompasses classical overtures to thumping discotheques). How else to explain the heavy reliance on real-time face-tuning editing features and likely Snapchat filters at key moments to allow Snook on many hovering screens to play even more characters?
But Snook was ultimately hampered on the night I attended by technical glitches. During an intense multiple-character chase sequence outside an opium den/throbbing nightclub, the live-screen relay from Snook’s hand-held smartphone camera repeatedly failed and nearly knocked her off the precise rhythms of her finely honed performance(s).
But that’s always a risk in live theater nowadays. There’s so much mechanization involved with sets, lighting and likely WI-FI technology in the case of this otherwise incisive and technologically intricate take on The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Now, one cannot fault the all visual glitz on display with the production design elements of Drag: The Musical. The campy and over-the-top drag costumes by Marco Marco are all shantay-you-stay worthy. And the blending of so much flashy neon-style lighting by designer Adam Honoré melds perfectly with Jason Sherwood color-bursting sets splashed with so much historical drag iconography.
And there are so many potentially funny moments allowed for the vocally starry cast. Drag: The Musical ambitiously brings together TV stars and local luminaries of the drag world alongside Broadway veterans whose past credits are sure to jog many happy memories of so many long-time theater queens.
For example, Drag: The Musical at the moment has Adam Pascal from the original cast of Rent, Eddie Korbich from the original cast of Assassins! and J. Elaine Marcos from the A Chorus Line Broadway revival and subsequent 2008 documentary Every Little Step! (exclamation points added by me for theater-queen emphasis).
Oh yeah, EGOT award winner Liza Minnelli is also a listed producer of Drag: The Musical and likely provides the show’s recorded opening and closing narration.
So, it’s a disappointment that the book of Drag: The Musical by Tomas Costanza, Ashley Gordon and Honard doesn’t measure up at all to the talented cast and design team. Drag: The Musical veers from arch camp comic gold dialogue every time that Alaska Thunderf*ck sets foot onstage, to by-the-numbers Hallmark holiday movie earnestness whenever the poorly written heterosexual characters get involved.
Drag: The Musical focuses on two rival drag clubs: The Cat House led by Kitty Galloway (Alaska Thunderf*ck) and The Fish Tank led by Alexis Gillmore (a hunky Nick Adams of Broadway’s Priscilla Queen of the Desert). Both drag clubs are facing financial peril and closure, but their bitter rivalry initially prevents them from working together.
It’s hard to take the plot stakes of Drag: The Musical too seriously, and the whole tone of the show strangely feels false whenever the songwriters and authors try to steer things to be genuinely serious. I also noticed that some cast members looked like they were just going through the motions on the night that I attended.
There has been some talk of Drag: The Musical possibly making the move to London, and I’m sure there’s a wide roster of RuPaul’s Drag Race alumni who could easily fill its casting ranks and the gorgeously designed stage world currently on display. But Drag: The Musical will need a lot of book doctoring, localized British references and better tailoring to specific drag cast members before any attempt should be made for it to cross the pond.
The Picture of Dorian Gray runs through June 29 at the Music Box Theatre, 239 W. 45th St., New York City. Tickets are $125.50-$421. Call Telecharge at 212-239-6200 or 800-447-7400 or visit doriangrayplay.com for more information.
Drag: The Musical runs through April 27 at New World Stages, 340 W. 50th St., New York City. Tickets are $49-$111. Call Telecharge at 212-239-6200 or visit DragTheMusical.com for more information.