Playing 26 roles in one production, Sarah Snook wins prestigious Olivier Award in London
By Rob Harris
Sarah Snook’s critically acclaimed performance in one-woman show The Picture of Dorian Gray on London’s West End has been capped with a prestigious Olivier Award for best actress.
The 36-year-old, best known for playing Shiv Roy in the hit TV show Succession, won ahead of a star-studded field which included Sex and the City star Sarah Jessica Parker for Plaza Suite.
Sarah Snook with the Olivier Award at the Royal Albert Hall in London.Credit: Getty
It is the first time the STC has been nominated and won the prestigious Olivier award. It is the third major acting award this year for Snook, having won an Emmy and Golden Globe for work in the final season of HBO’s acclaimed series, who has since February stunned audiences and critics alike in the Kip Williams adapted and directed Oscar Wilde classic at London’s Royal Haymarket Theatre.
The Australian plays all 26 roles in the production, which is headed for New York, among them Basil Hallward, Sibyl Vane and Gray himself - a handsome young gentleman corrupted by hedonistic values.
Designer Marg Horwell was also acknowledged for her work on the production with an Olivier — Britain’s equivalent of Broadway’s Tony Awards - winning best costume design.
“It’s an incredible honour to be on the stage in the West End and this is not something that I thought would come along with that,” Snook said after her win at London’s Royal Albert Hall.
“It’s billed as a one-woman show but it’s not. It’s the crew who are on stage with me all the time every night and they are a vital and constant support and inspiration. So thank you to the crew for being there in this show with me.”
In the play, originally performed by Eryn-Jean Norvill in Australia, Snook is surrounded by a camera crew, so her performance can be beamed onto overhead screens. The Australian production with Norvill wowed critics in Sydney and Melbourne, while Snook has been hailed by Fleet Street as a “chameleonic tour de force” and a performer of “exceptional pluck and mercurial power”.
Horwell, a multi-award-winning theatre, opera and film designer, acknowledged the creative team she worked with in Australia and in London.
“It makes your job incredibly easy when every single character is played by Sarah Snook,” she said. “It’s been a joy making the show with you.
Both Snook and Horwell singled out director Williams, who last week resigned from the Sydney Theatre Company (STC) after eight years at the helm, for his “very big brain”, “specificity” and “precision”.
Williams said that he was leaving the company as Dorian Gray would be touring to Broadway next year, and he felt he wouldn’t be able to juggle the production with programming the 2026 season.
“I thank my lucky stars I get to play inside that mad world you’ve created every night,” Snook said.
Jamie Lloyd’s reimagining of Sunset Boulevard starring Nicole Scherzinger was the standout show, with seven wins on an evening when many productions with celebrity talent were often overlooked.
Sarah Snook, winner of the best actress award for “The Picture Of Dorian Gray”, poses for photographers in the winner’s room during the Olivier Awards.Credit: AP
Happy Valley’s James Norton (A Little Life), Fleabag’s Andrew Scott (Vanya), Sex in The City’s Sarah Jessica Parker (Plaza Suite) and former Doctor Who star David Tennant (Macbeth) were all nominated, as were Sheridan Smith (Shirley Valentine) and Joseph Fiennes (Dear England).
Mark Gatiss won best actor for his performance as Sir John Gielgud in Jack Thorne’s The Motive And The Cue, a theatrical take on the fraught history behind a notorious 1964 Broadway production of Hamlet, starring Gielgud and Richard Burton.
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