Review: Salome (Theatre Royal Haymarket)

SALOME AT THE THEATRE ROYAL HAYMARKET

Review by Stephen Gilchrist

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The history of Salome, Oscar Wilde’s one-act play, is convoluted. Wilde wrote the script in French whilst in Paris, and before he had received acclaim for The Importance of Being Earnest and A Woman of No Importance, pitched the play successfully to actress Sarah Bernhardt for her season at London’s Royal Opera House.

Wilde’s intimate friend ‘Bosie’ - Lord Alfred Douglas - translated Salome into English, heavily edited by Wilde, who never got to see a production, since he was serving time in Reading Gaol by the time it was produced, and it was banned in England by the Lord Chamberlain for blasphemy. The play became recognised as significant, however, and formed the basis of Richard Strauss’s opera of the same name.

The well-known narrative concentrates on Salome, the stepdaughter of the lascivious Tetrarch, Herod Antipas, and her obsession with Jokanann (John the Baptist) who rejects her attempts at seduction. Set within the Roman province of Judea, at Herod’s palace, even atheist readers will be aware that this does not end well!

This production, a co-production with the Haymarket Theatre, is presented in contemporary dress and design, by the Gesher Company of Tel Aviv, a troupe which was originally formed by Yevgeny Arye and a group of Russian Immigrés. The company perform shows in Hebrew, Russian and English, in this case solely in English.

Salome is a difficult play to stage. It is serious, the language can be overly flowery, and there is always the risk that the characters are presented as caricatures of the biblical personalities with which we are all familiar. In fact, Wilde’s play is characterised by its highly stylistic, poetic, and decadent language, incorporating elements of French symbolism, the expression of subjective truths and emotions through indirect, suggestive, and symbolic language

In this version, production is everything. There are some striking stage pictures. Set and lighting (Galya Solodovnikova - winner of the 2024 Off West End Award for best set-and Gleb Filshtinsky) constantly surprise, and some of the text and action is musicalised and choreographed. It is exceptionally powerful and gains momentum as it draws to its inevitable and bloody conclusion.

The leads, Neta Roth as Salome, Doron Tavori as Herod, and Shir Sayag as the Prophet, are terrific. Roth depicts her character from the start as a playful, flighty, sexually precocious, spoilt teenager. As the play proceeds, her obsession with her stepfather’s prisoner, and his rejection of her, drives her to madness in her famous seven veils dance. Her performance is stunning, fabulously costumed at the outset of the dance and reduced, during the dance, to near nudity

Tavori presents a striking Herod, afraid of the Baptist, fearful that he really is a holy man, but at the same time is narcissistic, alcohol fuelled, drunk with power and guiltily recognising he entered into an incestuous relationship with his brother’s wife. He plays it very much with the intonation of a Tevya-esque character, a shrug of the shoulders, weary acceptance, and what is sometimes known as a ‘Yiddish macro-rhythm,’ the caricature of Jewish intonation. In this way he extracts comedy from the text and his character. His desperation in trying to beg Salome from demanding the head of the prophet is powerful stuff

Sayag, as Jokanann, performs and sings exquisitely to Louis Lebee’s music, and particularly so in his interaction with Salome. He is holy, wild, passionate, emoting in stylised, often exaggerated movement (movement director, Polina Dreyden), and is a genuine ‘cry in the wilderness’ as Isaiah would have it!

There is some real stage magic in aspects of this production, directed by Maxim Didenko, the primary setting being a reception room in the palace, complete with bar and an enormous light above in the centre of a silver helix. The rich colours throughout represent rich decadence and eroticism. Jokanna is described in the text as being imprisoned in a cistern of the palace and the design places him in a rectangular box high above the stage, a front shutter rising and slamming down incongruously to give emphasis to his increasingly angry prophetic warnings.

This production is a remarkable example of ‘world theatre’ and the way in which the arts can cross geographic borders. I thought this was a terrific evening at the theatre - shocking, moving, and innovative.

Salome plays at the Theatre Royal Haymarket on select dates until October 11th

For tickets and information visit https://trh.co.uk/whatson/salome/

Photos by Isaiah Fainberg