All the World's a Stage—With Only One Player On It

How do one-actor shows change the meaning of the literature they're presenting?

I recently attended two one-actor shows, The Picture of Dorian Gray, featuring Sarah Snook of Succession fame, and Vanya, featuring Andrew Scott, who is famous for a variety of stage and television roles. Both shows are adaptations of 19^th century literary works: Vanya is an adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s play Uncle Vanya, while The Picture of Dorian Gray is adapted from the Oscar Wilde novel of the same name. Because the shows revolve around the relationships among multiple characters, the choice to have one actor cover all roles is worthy of examination.

Alice Pike Barney, Medusa (1892). Do one-actor shows end up creating a monster?

Monopolylogue and Other Solo Performances

One-actor shows are not new. Starting in 1808, the actor Charles Mathews began to present one-man performances that were a combination of elements including monologues, sketches, and impersonations.¹ Significantly, some of these elements incorporated dialogue in which Mathews would play one character and a doll would stand in for another; Mathews brought the dolls to life using ventriloquism. A contemporary review (1818) noted Mathews’s talent at creating dialogue in this way:

The novelty of the evening was ventriloquism; … five distinct persons were heard to speak, as if they were actually before the audience, while all the voices came from one and the same person; and this was Mr. Mathews himself. In the character of a French valet, … he alternately held a conversation with a little child, with a housekeeper, a butler, and his master. The child was represented by a doll …; and one would have thought the doll actually spoke, so well did [Mathews] by his ventriloquial power imitate the voice of a child ….²

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, reviews and commentary on Mathews’s shows began to refer to Mathews’s performances of dialogues using ventriloquism as “monopolylogues.” Later in the 19^th century, Henry Kemble continued the monopolylogue show as a form.

The monopolylogue differs from other, non-dialogic one-actor shows, which were common in the 19^th century. Charles Dickens himself augmented the popularity of such shows with in-character readings of his own works. While he used different voices for different characters, he was still reading, and he did not attempt blocking that would create the semblance of multiple characters on stage. Similarly, Fanny Kemble, Henry’s sister, was famous for readings of Shakespeare plays in which she would use different voices for each of the characters.

While Dickens, Kemble, and others gave readings, there were still others who engaged in “platform performances” consisting of monologues by one or more fictional or historical characters. Helen Potter was distinguished among these monologuists, wearing costumes for each impersonation.

Unknown photographer, photographs from Helen Potter's Impersonations (1891).

The non-dialogic tradition of one-person shows continued in the 20^th century with Ruth Draper, who played a variety of imagined characters; Cornelia Otis Skinner, who played significant historical figures³; Hal Holbrook, who impersonated Mark Twain (video here); Anna Deavere Smith, who analyzed racial conflicts in a serial monologue format (video here); Spalding Gray, who delivered long, hilarious autobiographical monologues (video here); and many others.

John Singer Sargent, two portraits of Ruth Draper, one (1913, left) as herself; the other (1914) as a Dalmatian peasant.

Compared to these shows, Vanya and Picture of Dorian Gray are unusual for their complexity and the number of characters who must be played in active dialogue with each other. The difficulty of the one-actor format shapes the adaptations of both of these works, but in strikingly different ways.

A Monopolylogic Vanya

I saw Vanya (adapted by Simon Stephens; directed by Sam Yates), during its limited run at the Lucille Lortel Theatre. As other reviewers have noted, despite Andrew Scott’s immense talent, the rapid back-and-forth among five main and several ancillary characters can be confusing, especially before the audience becomes accustomed to the particular mannerisms of each character.

The adaptation brings the story from 1899 Russia to Ireland about a century later. There is a modern kitchen; Alexander Serebrakoff, in the original a retired art professor, is now a filmmaker. The dialogue has been simplified to some extent, and portions of it have been changed so that, for example, there aren’t references to Russian peasants.

Chekhov’s play centers on characters who are trapped and unfulfilled. Ambitions are thwarted; loves are unrequited; efforts are unrecognized. All of the characters want something – and do not receive it – from the others as they interact in the confinement of the filmmaker’s country house, which is maintained for him by Ivan (Vanya), his brother-in-law, and Sonya, the daughter of his first marriage.

Ivan feels that his life has been wasted in service to Alexander, who has turned out not to be the creative genius Ivan once thought him to be. Ivan also loves Alexander’s beautiful young wife Helena, an ongoing frustration that is another source of his resentment. Sonya loves the doctor, Michael, who comes to minister to Alexander, but Michael has no interest in Sonya; he, too, loves Helena. Sonya’s life is defined by the pain of unrequited love combined with the unending labor of keeping the household running.

When Alexander announces that he has decided to sell the estate out from under Ivan and Sonya, Ivan is so crazed by the possibility that he will lose all of the work he has invested in the estate over the years that he shoots at Alexander – and misses, a moment that emphasizes the frustration of purpose and desire that pervades the play. After Alexander and his wife leave the estate, Sonya soothes Ivan, and the play ends with her message of resignation and patience:

We shall live through the long procession of days before us, and through the long evenings; we shall patiently bear the trials that fate imposes on us; we shall work for others without rest, both now and when we are old; and when our last hour comes we shall meet it humbly, and there, beyond the grave, we shall say that we have suffered and wept, that our life was bitter, and God will have pity on us. Ah, then dear, dear Uncle, … we shall rest. I have faith, Uncle, fervent, passionate faith. We shall rest. We shall rest….

Remarkably, the turn-of-the-millennium Irish version is faithful to the sensibility and themes of Chekhov’s play despite the significant changes that are required to adapt the work to the different time and place, and to the monopolylogue format. As Scott, the show’s star, has remarked, “We’re all much more similar to each other than we think. Once you remove the surface … human beings all essentially want the same things.”⁴

Scott is right that Chekhov’s disparate characters all resemble each other to some extent in their frustration and, ultimately, resignation. Even the most egoistic character, Alexander, is forced to confront his aging, pain, and decline – and the fact that he is loathed by almost every other character. Because of the similarity of the characters’ predicaments, the monopolylogue’s blurring of their identities does not detract from our understanding of the play.

Dorian Gray: From the “New Hedonism” to the New Narcissism

I saw the monopolylogue version of Dorian Gray (adapted and directed by Kip Williams) during its limited run at the Music Box Theatre. Sarah Snook not only plays all the characters, but also speaks the narrator’s portion of Wilde’s text. Having the narrator present despite the dialogic format helps to make sense of the whirl of characters.

The set gives prominent place to several large screens. These allow the projection of pre-recorded video of Snook playing one character while Snook in person is playing another, each projected onto a screen, thus enabling dialogue. In one scene, Snook (or, mostly, video of Snook) plays numerous characters all sitting at a dining table, each with distinctive mannerisms and a different costume. The eeriest effects result from a small army of black-clad videocamera operators constantly surrounding Snook onstage and projecting video of her. A camera can show her as one character from one angle, while another video feed, taken from a different angle, can show her as another character. This enables the two resulting images to engage in dialogue across two screens. The use of video also facilitates the audience’s recognition of the distinctions between the characters.

Although the production is, thus, centered around 21^st century technology, the costumes and text are for the most part faithful to the Victorian setting of the story. Even so, the adaptation transforms the meaning of Wilde’s novel entirely.

Wilde’s novel is a meditation about art. (I wrote an earlier essay about this novel, available here, which I hope you’ll read.) In the preface to the novel, Wilde wrote, “beautiful things mean only beauty…. All art is quite useless.” But there is much in the story that casts doubt on these pronouncements. For example, the portrait of Dorian seems much more than “only beauty.” It reflects not only Dorian the model and Basil Hallward the painter, but also the influence of Lord Henry Wotton, who converses with Dorian during the last sitting for the portrait and inspires what Basil says is “the most wonderful expression.” Lord Henry is important in the novel because his arrival creates a love triangle among himself, Basil, and Dorian. And he inspires in Dorian not only a longing for perpetual youth, but also an adherence to the “New Hedonism” that sends Dorian spinning off into debauchery and corruption and causes the portrait to become a record of that transformation.

And what does “only beauty” mean? The once beautiful portrait, which Dorian hides away in a locked room, becomes the evolving record not only of Dorian’s aging, but also of his moral degeneration. Although Dorian never changes corporeally, the portrait records his descent into cruelty, vice, and murder, making it a symbol of depravity, not beauty. In Wilde’s novel, Dorian’s degradation corrupts the art. Only after Dorian’s death does the portrait revert to its former perfection, restored to the status of “only beauty.”

Lui Trugo, illustration for The Picture of Dorian Gray (1931). Although it’s not clear from the image, this must be just as Dorian is dying from having stabbed himself when he thought he was stabbing his portrait - because the portrait has been restored to its youthful appearance, while Dorian looks old.

The one-actor adaptation of Dorian Gray does not shed light on any of these complexities. Instead, the use of video and the focus on a single actor transform the text into a critique – but also an exemplar – of technology-enabled vanity, self-promotion, and exposure in the age of social media. The black-clad camera operators swarm around Snook, creating a paparazzi-like effect. The massive screens projecting her image, coupled with sound effects, create a world in which the actor is constantly being magnified, amplified, and multiplied.

In a disturbing sequence at the midpoint of the show, Snook (as Dorian) takes a selfie and then uses filters that take the resulting image and transform it into the uncanny valley of cosmetic surgery: lips filled, forehead lifted, brow arched, skin somehow plasticized. Even Dorian’s eerily unchanging beauty is not enough; he must use technology to become more beautiful than beauty, more perfect than perfection. The transformation effected by the filters is like watching the latter half of a time-lapse film of a fruit ripening to perfection but then overripening, molding, and putrefying.

Although the audience (and, evidently, the Tony Awards Nominating Committee) loved the show, reviews have been mixed. Variety published a brutal takedown that criticizes the show’s lack of fidelity to the sensibility and themes, particularly the queerness, of Wilde’s novel. The reviewer also huffs that the production “fails to justify or explain why this is a one-person show or what is gained by this choice…. [I]t remains unclear what – if anything – the production is trying to say other than that vanity is bad.”

While the show departs radically from the central themes of the novel, it conveys far more than the truism that vanity is bad. The production is a satiric condemnation of our preoccupation with image. We structure our lives to interact with, multiply, and fetishize constructed and curated versions of ourselves in a way that nullifies everyone else—except insofar as those others are focused on us and reflect us back to ourselves. The anonymous, black-clad camera operators are constantly focused on the show’s star, and every character is merely a reflection or a transposition of Dorian Gray. The monopolylogic format even suggests that there is no room for queerness—or straightness—in a world in which only one’s self matters.

Thus, the monopolylogic Dorian Gray is almost the opposite of the Vanya adaptation. In Vanya, the single-actor format emphasizes the universality of each character’s predicament in a way that reinforces enduring themes of Chekhov’s work. Dorian Gray, on the other hand, transforms Wilde’s novel to create a critique of 21^st century egoism.

1. Shannon Selin, “The 19th-Century Comedy Routines of Charles Mathews” available here; see also Martin Meisel, “Miss Havisham Brought to Book” PMLA 81:278-285 (1966).

2. Review quoted in Selin. Dickens’s memorable character in The Pickwick Papers, Alfred Jingle, is thought to have been inspired by Mathews.

3. John S. Gentile, “The One-Person Show in America: From Chautauqua to Broadway,“ Studies in Popular Culture 9:23-28 (1986), pp. 28-29.

4. Interview by Jeffrey Vizcaíno, available here.