[image]
[title]It's very difficult to overhype The Picture of Dorian Gray, which sold out its run at Sydney Theatre Company, then travelled to Adelaide, back to Sydney, then to Melbourne and is headed to Broadway. Critics have been unanimous (and effusive!) in their praise for the show, with five-star raves across the board.
The show, in case you've been living under a dramaturgical rock, is a one-woman production of Oscar Wilde's famous novella, created by STC artistic director Kip Williams. Its star, Eryn Jean Norvill, plays 26 characters, with giant screens featuring recorded material of her in various guises swooping all over the stage. Norvill is accompanied on stage by a team of adept (and very athletic) videographers, who record her live and then beam her into the screens, to fall in love with, fight, run from, run towards, dine alongside and even murder various versions of herself. Norvill is just jaw-dropping in the role, delivering the kind of performance for which the term 'tour de force' was devised. But with an exhausting national tour and the bright lights of the Great White Way beckoning, it became clear that expecting Norvill to perform eight shows a week ad infinitum might be a tall order.
The production approached Australian stage and screen star Nikki Shiels to double the size of the cast as an alternate performer, to understudy the role if Norvill couldn't go on and to give her the chance to catch her breath. Shiels is an extremely accomplished performer with dozens of theatre, film and TV credits to her name (she won a Green Room Award for her role in Home, I'm Darling at MTC in 2021, and a Sydney Theatre Award for They Divided the Sky in 2018), but even for her, Dorian Gray is a physical and mental challenge.
"You sort of spend the whole day preparing, or days before preparing, your body to [perform]," says Shiels. "And then also recovery is just as important, like warming the voice down takes me a while... It is like a highly athletic sport."
Like everyone else who saw The Picture of Dorian Gray during its first run at STC, Shiels was blown away by the production and by Norvill's performance. "I saw the show in 2020, and it was kind of 'mind blown', as an audience member, by Kip and Eryn Jean and the whole creative team. And you know, you see a wonderful thing and it inspires you, and then you think that's it."
As a woman to have that kind of complexity, there's always a male gaze in there somehow. So it is wonderfully liberating to be free, completely free of that.
But of course that wasn't it as far as Shiels' involvement in the show would go, and a year later she found herself in rehearsals to take on one of the most ambitious shows ever mounted on an Australian stage. "It was a layering process, says Shiels. "And I definitely began with the novel and then incrementally started learning in December [2021], just because I knew that I would get into rehearsals. And I was lucky to have known what I was walking into it, having seen it. [Then came] all the other layers of learning, technical, where to stand, [where to] look. The creative team jokes that it's a show of millimetres, because it is – slightly too far to the left or right and the shot is not what it needs to be. It was just starting early, making sure that I was prepared internally and logically and I guess imaginatively, and then you have layering in performance, emotional arcs of all the characters, knowing very specifically who I am at any given time."
What cemented the characters for her was watching Norvill rehearsing them in preparation to take the show to Adelaide. "That was a real turning point, because I then felt like it was not just me in my head with the script, but watching the person that originated the role in process, which is a very private kind of concealed thing, usually, from the audience. But it was a real gift to be able to absorb that information in a way where the pressure was not on me."
Of course, the pressure was soon on Shiels, who filmed her recorded characters throughout April, listening to Norvill's recorded voice in an earpiece as she filmed to get the timings exact. Shiels performed in front of an audience for the first time on the last day of April.
"I did have a run-through of the show in the space without an audience, but it was by no means up to scratch. It was sort of still a jumble of learning and making mistakes and Kip being on a shout mic, directing as I was doing it. It was a bit surreal, actually, the first time I had an audience. I really didn't know that I could do it with witnesses."
But Shiels says that far from adding to her nerves, the energy from a live audience was the help she needed to nail such a complicated show. "Nerves, they shoot up – it's like double the adrenaline and nervous energy in front of an audience, but there's something in me that it helps me take the leap of faith. I think an audience are all there to catch you when you're on the tightrope. And their energy keeps me on there, if that makes sense."
Shiels says that although she's the only actor on stage, the camera crew are just as much a part of the show as she is. "In a way, they are the other actors, so there is silent communication and reading going on between people who help with the quick changes, stage management," she says.
But although the camera crew are essential to this show, it is Shiels who is inhabiting all 26 characters during some performances throughout the Melbourne season. Far from being daunted by the numerous on-stage quick costume changes and shifts between characters, Shiels says the entire experience has been one of empowerment. "What an amazing journey to go on. And as a woman to go on that journey, it's such a privilege because it's the genius of Kip's casting. I think the queerness of the production and the gender fluidity of the production, it feels like such a rebellious empowering commentary for a woman to be inhabiting all of those men and in all of their extremities and their dark and light shades of personality and complexity.
"In terms of the roles that I've played, as a woman to have that kind of complexity, there's always a male gaze in there somehow. So it is wonderfully liberating to be free, completely free of that and inhabiting the psychology of men in such a camp, wonderful form. It's such an empowering adventure for a performer."