Latest news with #MargHorwell
ABC News
a day ago
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Sarah Snook wins Tony award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in The Picture of Dorian Gray
Australian actor Sarah Snook has won a Tony award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play for The Picture of Dorian Gray. The play marked Snook's Broadway debut. "This is an intimidating room full of incredibly talented people," Snook told the crowd upon accepting her award. Stars including George Clooney, Cynthia Erivo, Ben Stiller and Keanu Reeves were present at the awards ceremony. "Thank you so much for this," Snook said. Snook thanked her team, and people associated with the show. "It's billed as a one person show and I don't feel alone in any night that I do this show," Snook said. "There are so many people on stage making it work and so many people behind the stage making it work." Snook singled out director Kip Williams who is also nominated. She also thanked her husband Dave Lawson "for keeping the family together". Snook is on her way to EGOT status — when a performer has won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony. Snook already has an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series for her role in Succession. The Picture of Dorian Gray was nominated in six categories, with seven Australians recognised. Australian Marg Horwell has also won for Best Costume Design of a Play.
The Guardian
a day ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Sarah Snook wins best actress at Tony awards for The Picture of Dorian Gray
Sarah Snook has won the Tony award for best actress in a play for her performance in all 26 roles in The Picture of Dorian Gray, the Sydney Theatre Company one-woman show that has become a Broadway hit. 'This means so much for a little Australian girl,' she said, from the podium, thanking her husband for 'holding down the fort and keeping our family together.' The show marks the Australian actor's Broadway debut, after having also performed the show in London's West End, for which she won an Olivier award last year. Snook took over the role from actor Erin-Jean Norvill, who originated the performance to acclaim in Australia between 2020 and 2022. 'It's about concealing and revealing, putting on masks, taking off masks,' Snook told the New York Times. 'It's about having your soul be seen.' On Sunday, New York Times critic Elisabeth Vincentelli wrote, 'When I left The Picture of Dorian Gray all those weeks ago, I said to whoever would listen on Eighth Avenue that they might as well start engraving Sarah Snook's Tony right then and there. I will claim this one for my clairvoyant skills.' The play, directed by former STC artistic director Kip Williams, has been widely praised by critics and was nominated for six Tonys this year. On Sunday night, Melbourne-based costume designer Marg Horwell also won the costume design category for Dorian Gray, but the show lost out in the lighting, sound and scenic design categories. Williams is also nominated for best director. After the success of Dorian Gray on Broadway, Williams is set to stage his one-woman production of Dracula there, with Wicked star Cynthia Erivo playing all 23 roles.
Yahoo
27-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
How designer Marg Horwell transforms Sarah Snook in ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray' through quick costume changes (exclusive images)
"She had a lot of physical offers, which is so great as a designer to be able to respond to," Marg Horwell tells Gold Derby about working with Sarah Snook on The Picture of Dorian Gray. Horwell is the costume designer and scenic designer of the hit play, and impressively, received two Tony nominations for her work — one for each discipline. Snook portrays all 26 characters in this iteration of Oscar Wilde's classic tale of obsession and vanity. As cameras swirl around the actress, she flits between personas before the audience's eyes. Horwell's visuals become an essential tool, not only in delineating each figure in the story, but detailing Dorian's descent. In our recent interview, the designer discusses allowing the audiences to witness the magic of Snook's many quick changes. "I think it's about making the best version of seeing something you're not meant to see," says Horwell. More from GoldDerby 'The Last of Us' director Kate Herron on bringing the Ellie and Dina relationship to the show: 'It was a privilege' 'Sunset Boulevard': Will Andrew Lloyd Webber break a 30-year Tony drought? How Zoe Saldaña helped shape Pixar's upcoming film 'Elio' Photo by Marg Horwell Sarah Snook is playing 26 different roles in this play. She constantly switches back and forth in a scene, and sometimes acts opposite filmed versions of herself. With such a vast array of characters, where was your starting point for the costumes? Marg Horwell: We built it like building blocks a bit, so it felt less enormous when we first started out. Kip [Williams] was writing the adaptation while we were designing, it was kind of moving at the same time. So when we would hit points where there were many, many characters, we would be handpicking who the most prominent characters would be. So he was crafting that as we were going along. It feels like a gradual thing now, but I guess we started with who she would be on stage and how that would move, and then furnished around her with everybody else. I think the biggest scene, she's opposite six versions of herself. So yeah, they're big. Only doing one character at a time, they do feel quite intimate and small, but actually when you see them all together, it does feel like a very big scene. Photo by Marg Horwell The costuming is essential for delineating characters. Especially since Snook completes most costume changes in front of the audience. How did you craft outfits that can do a rapid quick change on stage? I think the key to how it works in the production is that it starts very simple. Sarah changes her voice and looks at a different camera and then adds small props. She's smoking when she's Lord Henry, she's holding a paintbrush when she's Basil. It's a conversation between two people and it's just that subtle shift of her posture and her voice. And it's a tiny bit of design where actually you do start to hear them before you see them, and then we build them gradually. We do meet Lord Henry on camera first and see him fully dressed and imagined as a filmed character, and then we build him live on stage. So it's to me, the most thrilling thing because it's exposing the theatrical devices that you don't ever really get to see. It's the things we usually hide. So you have cameras circling Sarah, so she can always be speaking, nothing goes over her head. Things have to attach at the back. Facial hair goes on in between words. Wigs, you get one shot at because the microphone has to still work without getting bumped by anybody. So it works like more choreography. It ends up being a team of people learning a dance, learning how to communicate really well with each other, and it lands with music, so it feels very satisfying when you watch it. Photo by Marg Horwell The production takes visual cues from different time periods. How did the elements of past and present come together for you? It's something that I'm really interested in a lot of my work. If we're making work now, and we're not trying to make a museum piece or a true historically accurate piece, then it is something that should draw on all aspects, including things that are relevant now. This piece especially, because it is about someone who doesn't age and someone who in our production starts in the late 1800s, and we never really say where we end. I think as more contemporary influences enter the production, that means that I have license to draw from anything from the last hundred years of fashion or any kind of prominent, especially androgynous or queer figures from history. I love historical fashion, but I love looking at all kinds of influences. There are lots of great new romantics influences, a lot of androgynous fashion and musicians from late '80s and early '90s who were really pushing the envelope and starting to experiment with who they were publicly. It's a pretty subversive, exciting, experimental time. So that's all packed into that story for me in a great way. I think that really speaks to the journey of someone who has no consequences and can try anything and then falls in love with excess. Photo by Marg Horwell Dorian's white, Ziggy Stardust-esque jacket feels like a prime example of that androgyny. Flowers bloom from the sleeves, and those flowers become a major motif in your scenic design. What inspired that choice? I think it's the second chapter in the book, where Oscar Wilde describes a garden. He has written these whole chapters where he will describe fabric for paragraphs and paragraphs, or jewels and how they might glint in the sun. And this garden is so beautifully described. I love artificial things on stage. We know it's theater, we know it's something pretending to be real, and in a story like this that lends itself to artifice and manufactured identity very well. So I like that there's fake flowers all the way through, and I like that they are almost improbable in the way that they present themselves. So we start very simply with one flower and then that motif starts to take over. It starts to grow out of the set, starts to grow out of the furniture, and eventually is growing out of Dorian's costume and up around his neck. I think there's also something about when flowers start to turn, and there's something so cloying and overwhelming about that when they're so perfumed and heady that it's almost about to tip over into being horrible. Dorian gets to a point where he is absolutely suffocated by his own excess and his own greed. In that country house scene, there's a lot of floral things, that from a distance look like big floral arrangements, but there's lots of junk in there as well. There's stuff from a party shop, there's lots of silly plastic fruit and fake burgers. A zombie hand is my favorite thing. It's at the top of one and it's a zombie hand that lights up. It's this full, cheap capitalist explosion that you just get glimpses of on camera. That's when it's at its peak. It travels the whole way through the show, through the set and the costume. And I think it's something that is a great thing that can evolve with character and then go from being very beautiful to being actually quite disconcerting and gross. That traveling motif really aids in the concept of Dorian Gray being this myth or fable. Yeah, I think that's right. It really is a fable at some point or a kind of mythology. Even within the story of someone with a reputation that is incredibly positive and then can become quite sordid and notorious. Just the way that can turn. You're now a two-time Tony nominee. It's rare to receive two nominations for the same show. What are you most looking forward to at the Tony Awards? It's a huge honor. It's kind of otherworldly. Like something you wish for or imagine could happen, and never actually really believed that it would happen. I'm in Australia at the moment and we're flying over for the ceremony. There's something about the Broadway community over there that is just something that I've never experienced before. I have felt really welcomed and just so thrilled to be part of it. The way that this city celebrates this industry is a very rare and incredibly special thing. So I feel like being in Radio City ... being there with everyone who's made work this year is the most exciting thing. All of those people who, you've seen them in shows, they have seen your show, and there is actually a really genuine dialogue happening with that community. It's remarkable to experience for the first time. That's what I'm most excited about … and probably really great snacks! This interview has been edited for length and clarity. SIGN UP for Gold Derby's free newsletter with latest predictions Best of GoldDerby Who Needs a Tony to Reach EGOT? Sadie Sink on her character's 'emotional rage' in 'John Proctor Is the Villain' and her reaction to 'Stranger Things: The First Shadow' 'It should be illegal how much fun I'm having': Lea Salonga on playing Mrs. Lovett and more in 'Stephen Sondheim's Old Friends' Click here to read the full article.
