Theatre-makers have been using live cameras to dissect onstage emotions for a while, but rarely has the use of contemporary technology felt as apposite, seamless and just plain theatrical as Kip Williams’ The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Over an unbroken two-hour stretch, five cameras and a hardworking support crew of nine create one dazzling image after another. And with Sarah Snook – she of Succession fame – singlehandedly embodying 26 characters in a breath-taking tour de force performance, it looks like Sydney Theatre Company has an international hit on its hands.

Sarah Snook in Sydney Theatre Company’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. Photo © Marc Brenner

Oscar Wilde’s 1890 novella centres on Dorian Gray, a strikingly beautiful young man captured in paint by infatuated artist Basil Hallward. Tempted by the serpentine Lord Henry Wotton to embark on a career of hedonistic pleasure while he’s still young, Gray manages to retain his looks over several decades, while the portrait, consigned to an attic, is gradually...