None of this is new in entertainment. Entranced by the possibilities that camera trickery allows, double (or more) performances have been part of film and TV almost since the dawn of movies. A number are now classics, from Peter Sellers in “Dr. Strangelove” and Hayley Mills (and later Lindsay Lohan) in “The Parent Trap” to most of the main cast of “Back to the Future Part II.” There’s Jeremy Irons in “Dead Ringers” and Christian Bale in “The Prestige,” Tatiana Maslany in “Orphan Black” and James McAvoy in “Split.” Nicolas Cage received an Oscar nomination for playing twins in “Adaptation,” and also sort of did it in “Face/Off,” alongside John Travolta. (Technically Kim Novak didn’t play two roles in “Vertigo,” but you’d be forgiven for remembering it that way.)
The multicharacter format also persists because, in practical terms, it’s a good way to garner critical acclaim, if you do it right. The performer gets a built-in showcase, a way to demonstrate versatility and range.
Such is the case with both Andrew Scott, who takes on all eight characters in his Off Broadway one-man “Vanya,” and Sarah Snook, who plays a staggering 26 roles in the Broadway production of “The Picture of Dorian Gray.” Snook’s performance, which was nominated for a Tony on Thursday, has been particularly buzzy; watching it prompts a feeling not wholly unlike the astonishment that comes from watching a virtuosic Olympic gymnast. She’s working at full throttle, switching accents and attitudes, talking nonstop, running around, changing costumes for two hours, no intermission. To many audiences, who know her primarily as the competitive but damaged Shiv Roy from “Succession,” it’s a revelation. I was exhausted for her by the end — and I saw the second performance of the day.
“Dorian Gray” makes ample use of screens hanging from the ceiling, oriented in a phone-like portrait mode, onto which pretaped performances are projected. Sometimes several Snooks appear onscreen; sometimes the onstage Snook plays off them, creating a spectacle that resembles, slightly and not entirely accidentally, the kind of multicharacter tableau that Lander and other creators make use of on TikTok. Midway through the show, Snook’s Dorian Gray becomes obsessed with his phone, and with applying filters to change his appearance, zazzing it up, transforming himself into a being that’s more what might be called yassified. He has, in essence, created a digital doppelgänger of himself. If you know the story, you know it is not unrelated to his own death. Perhaps, the play suggests, the vanity of the internet has turned us all into multicharacter performers.