Salomé
by Oscar Wilde
Directed by Owen Horsley
Designed by Bretta Greece
Music Perfume Genius
Royal Shakespeare Company
Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon
Friday 16th June 2017
CAST
Suzanne Burden – Herodias
Andra Cowperthwaite – Page
Ian Evans – Naaman / Singer
Gavin Fowler – Iokanaan
Bally Gill – Jew
Roberta Ginty – Soldier
Ben Hall – soldier
Christopher Middleton – Nazarene
Miles Mitchell – Soldier
Byron Mondahl- Nazarene
Matthew Pidgeon – Herod
Matthew Tennyson – Salomé
Jon Trenchard – Jew
Johnson Wilson – Tigellinus
Simon Yahoo – Jew
Assad Zaman – Syrian
Bring me the head of the RSC Artistic Director!
Herod having fun
I go into this more than mildly irritated. Salomé is the only Oscar Wilde play I haven’t seen. I’ve always wanted to see it, because when I was eighteen it was my then girlfriend’s audition piece, and I listened to it on train journeys to auditions. As so often, you wait four decades for a play and two come along, as the National Theatre has just done Salomé too. We opted for the RSC production.
I was delighted to see the RSC had included it in the Roman Season, thinking Palestinian robes from 0 AD will make a change from togas and tunics. But then it turns out to be in modern dress. Then when we booked there was an offer if you booked all the plays. We did, and would never have booked Snow in Midsummer otherwise, so we are delighted that we did.
At that point, there was no mention I recall that the play would have a man playing Salomé. More recently, the RSC put this up:
Marking 50 years since the decriminalisation of homosexuality in England and Wales, Owen Horsley (Associate Director on the King & Country season) directs this new, contemporary take on Oscar Wilde’s classic, placing sexual ambiguity at the core
Several questions come to mind. Why wasn’t this on the original description of the season? Is giving a man a sensual female role necessarily a marker of the 1967 legal change? Why Wilde? Presumably because the play is dedicated to Alfred, Lord Douglas who allegedly translated it from French. I have read it and it lacks Wilde’s snappy dialogue and you have to say the ornate language is poetic, but also overblown. The justification for the casting seems the Aubrey Beardsley illustration of Salomé with breasts and testicles, as seen in the programme..
Salomé (Matthew Tennyson) in slip and red high heels
If we’re looking for homosexual late 19th / 20th century playwrights to celebrate those 50 years, the list is long, probably in terms of popularity, a majority. Terence Rattigan’s Separate Tables in his original version (as done nowadays) goes to the heart of the issue for example, not that I can see the RSC doing Rattigan. Would a new play on the trial of Oscar Wilde mark the occasion more clearly? So basically I’m negative before I even go in. Also looking at the cast list, one woman to fifteen men is a long way from the Globe or National’s talk of casting as near to 50 / 50 male and female as possible … I mean a woman can’t even get the role of Salomé!
We felt so misled by this one, that we had considered ditching our Friday tickets and just going up to Stratford for Vice Versa on the Saturday. The only reason we decided to see it was that we had booked our Friday overnight stay on a non-refundable basis.
So we went to see it and … actually it made sense and I was impressed, and enjoyed it. I was finding it hard to see how it would make sense, but it came together, and I don’t think the cross-casting was a celebration of decriminalisation either. Or if so, failed. It did start out as a tabloid gay cliche with the singer dressed in black leather bondage gear singing a pop song by Perfume Genius with a banal drum pattern, and as the “Syrian” lisped away about Salomé’s beauty, it wasn’t looking promising at all. It took off as King Herod and his posse burst on stage. Look at the cast list … no idea who was supposed to be a Jew, a Nazarene a page, or a soldier, but that’s Wilde’s fault and it didn’t matter.
We have the vile Herod (the performance of the night by Matthew Pidgeon), lusting after his stepdaughter, Salomé (Matthew Tennyson) who is also his niece. Wilde must have been consciously echoing Claudius and Hamlet … Herod has married his brother’s wife, Herodias. As Herodias points out contemptuously, she has produced a daughter, he has had no issue. Salomé has developed a passionate interest in the prophet Iokanaan (i.e. John The Baptist).
Herod (centre) – Matthew Pidgeon, with his cohorts
Herod and his lustful, drooling, drunken buddies are a major team, while Herodias looks on and despises the lot of them. Herod wants Salome´to dance for him, and promises anything, half his kingdom, his white peacocks, all his jewels, if she will. Note that Salomé is always referred to as feminine … daughter, she, her. Salomé dances, the dance of the seven veils, at the end of which she / he strips to reveal his maleness, then demands the head of Iokanaan. Herod is horrified and spends ages trying to wriggle out of the promise. She gets the head and kisses it.
Salomé, Matthew Tennyson
OK, the centrepiece of the entire play is that sensuous dance, where we expect an actress to do an … er, artistic … striptease. What we get here is prancing about ineptly to loud music (Matthew Tennyson is a brilliant actor, but not a natural dancer) and the seven veils becomes the one white tablecloth. (Later nylon veils rained down from the ceiling). The loud music, the inept childish attempt to dance suddenly rang bells … Herod as Jimmy Saville lusting after the young teen dancers on Top of The Pops. The towers on stage looked like a 70s pop TV show even. I don’t imagine it was a direct reference, but the point holds. That was the point of the cross casting, those people (like King Herod or Jimmy Saville ) corrupted the innocent, and couldn’t care less whether they were male or female. Are you a boy or a girl? It didn’t make any difference to them. I guess the Wilde / Lord Douglas biographical bit, is that the innocent boy then turns out not to be so innocent, by demanding the decapitation of the object of his / her own desire and snogging the dead lips.
The full frontal nudity is a 2017 hallmark : Cleopatra, Woyzeck and this so far. I haven’t seen so many private parts dangled on stage since the glory days of Hair. On the whole, the shock value has gone over the decades. My companion described the gay references in performance as “Versailles-lite.” Very lite in fact.
Iokanaan (Gavin Fowler)
I liked the ambient effect music, but will not be queuing up to buy Perfume Genius’s efforts at song. There appears to be a knock-on effect from the Emma Rice regime at The Globe affecting the RSC ; tacking on a gender agenda, broad strokes of sexual images in the singer, lots of pop music, modern dress, even while calling it part of “The Roman Season.” It fits better at the RSC, which has never claimed to reproduce an Elizabethan / Jacobean experience.
Herodias (Suzanne Burden)
Marvellous background acting, notably Suzanne Burden as Herodias radiating her contempt of Herod and her displeasure, especially wonderful while consuming a bowl of grapes. Herod’s crew personified “lust” as if in Dr Faustus. Not subtle, but done perfectly in unison. Matthew Pidgeon’s long monologue of offers of peacocks and jewellery is great writing enhanced by a great delivery. Herod is a role to savour for an actor. I recalled an actor telling the story of how she was chosen to play Herod in every Nativity play at her girls private school, because she was the only Jewish girl in the year. She finally pointed out that the historical Herod (a Gentile who converted to Judaism) was the only non-Jewish person in the entire story. The teachers were shocked. It had never struck them. But as she pointed out, getting the best role led to her career in acting.
Rating? My companion suggests four, I think three. Misrepresentation in the original season announcements has to take off one.
Three ***
WHAT THE CRITICS SAID:
3
Michael Billington, Guardian ***
Jane Edwards, Sunday Times ***
Catherine Vonledebur, What’s On Stage ***
2
Domenic Cavendish, Telegraph **
Sam Marlowe, The Times, **
Ben Kulvichit, The Stage **
OSCAR WILDE ON THIS BLOG
Importance of Being Earnest 2010 by Oscar Wilde, Rain or Shine Company
Importance of Being Earnest 2014 by Oscar Wilde, West End & Tour, directed by Lucy Bailey
Importance of Being Earnest, 2015 by Oscar Wilde with David Suchet as Lady Bracknell
An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde, Chichester Festival Theatre
A Woman of No Importance, Classic Spring 2017
Lady Windermere’s Fan, Classic Spring 2018
MATTHEW TENNYSON
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, BBC TV 2016 (Lysander)
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Globe, 2013, (Puck)
GAVIN FOWLER
The Winter’s Tale, RSC, 2013 (Florizel)
The Taming of The Shrew, RSC, 2012 (Lucentio)
The Syndicate, by Eduardo de Fillippo, Bath 2011
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