“It begins at the end.” You might be warned from the start – or should that be the long-wished-for finish? Staring-eyed, wild-haired with a scrofulous tattoo all over her arms, Olwen Fouéré advances towards the audience to share a few sonorous paradoxes. About coming together but falling apart, about being silent and coming to speak. In Salomé, everything sounds significant but it is hard to know what anything means.
Yaël Farber’s play reimagines the unnamed woman in the Bible who, prompted by her mother, asked for the head of John the Baptist as a reward for dancing and stripping. Irritation with the way women have been represented leads Farber to wild licence. No longer Oscar Wilde’s siren, Salomé becomes a revolutionary force: the slaying of John the Baptist is a call to arms for embattled Christians. Salomé is not only a revolutionary woman, she is territory. Perhaps she a nexus. She is certainly not a character. Her merkin has more personality.
This slow-moving tableau is accompanied by ululations and gift-wrapped in Susan Hilferty’s luscious design. Sand drizzles downwards. Fabric ruches. Light hallows. Nothing is embodied; everything is proclaimed. Lines from the Song of Solomon are mashed up with declarations about the rights of the displaced. A revolve spins slowly round, delivering newly flat episodes, as in a nightmare Last Supper at Yo! Sushi.
Stranded in this are talents. Not least Farber’s, who has lit up the stage with a revolutionary Mies Julie, an exciting Les Blancs. Lloyd Hutchinson (Pilate) has one of the most memorable voices on the British stage, Paul Chahidi (Herod) one of the most insinuatingly comic faces. An expense of spirit on a waste of stage.
