Salome is a biblical tale that might be timeless enough to have contemporary resonance. After all, the spectacle of older men lusting after younger women is scarcely unknown in our times. So this new version of Oscar Wilde’s 1892 play, Salome, offers a welcome chance to reassess the story.
Originally written in French, Salome was translated by Wilde and his lover Lord Alfred Douglas, a process that soon degenerated into acrimonious arguments between the two. But however odd the resulting language, the plot is clear enough. Salome, the cock-teasing and wilful child of Herodias (who has remarried Herod, King of the Jews), becomes fascinated by Iokanaan (also known as John the Baptist). Spurned by the holy man, she makes a deal with her frisky stepfather: I’ll dance for you if you give me the prophet’s head on a platter.
If this sounds vulgar, then it catches perfectly the tone of Jamie Lloyd’s updated version, for the Headlong theatre company, which comes at you shrouded in mist with a thumping soundtrack and its pants down at its ankles. Dressed by off-cuts from the Israeli Defence Force and Mad Max, the ambience smells strongly of foul pitch, and the play is performed on a black and metallic set, brilliantly designed by Soutra Gilmour,
which suggests a dystopic world hit by environmental disaster.
In Salome Wilde’s language is not the expected witty and glittering chat, but an elaborate symbolist creation, dripping with chiselled gems, soaked with carefully wrought verbal images and hung with heavy apocalyptic imaginings. For a playtext, it is often bogged down by literary conceit, full of “thees”, “thous” and “doths”, and populated with Caldeans and Judeans. The King James Authorised Version of the Bible has a lot to answer for.
In this futuristic production, Salome is less a princess and more a chavette. Played with feisty raucousness by Zawe Ashton, she cannot mention desire without pitching up her rump or rubbing her thighs together. When she tempts Seun Shote’s forceful Iokanaan, she dips her hand into her knickers and holds it in front of his nose. Well, at least you can’t accuse her of being indirect. But her “I will kiss thy mouth” is more petulant than sinister: all in all, a case of pimp my bible.
Equally contemporary is Con O’Neill’s Herod, with his high-pitched squeals, wild gyrations and frantic crotch-grabbing (his own more often than anyone else’s). Fielding a repertoire that swings from rasping spits to campy huskiness, he is royalty as druggy partygoer. Unsurprisingly, his consort, Herodias (memorably pronounced as “Herodi-arse”), is a drunken lady slightly past her sell-by date, an old clubber who takes her wine from a jerry can.
Most of Lloyd’s energy has gone into creating striking visual set-pieces and Salome’s climactic dance — a strip rather lacking in tease which is played in front of a ghetto blaster and flashing lights — is undoubtedly well realised, as is her final scene with the head of Iokanaan, an image of cruelty as powerful as you are ever likely to see.
But although the actors fail to connect convincingly with each other, the freeze-framed compositions are vivid, etching themselves on your eyeballs. On the press night, the fire alarm went off by accident, but its flashing lights just seemed to be part of the show. This is an unsubtle and lurid night which suggests that being contemporary necessitates becoming incredibly vulgar.
