Brighton Year-Round 2024

Salomé

New Venture Theatre, Brighton

Genre: Adaptation, Classical and Shakespeare, Costume, Drama, Feminist Theatre, Fringe Theatre, Live Music, Puppetry, Theatre, Tragedy, Translation

Venue: New Venture Theatre Upstairs

Festival: Brighton Year-Round

Low Down

Review

Every so often a production arrives to blur boundaries between theatre and experience. That happens in Brighton about as regularly as the Northern Lights. Oscar Wilde’s Salomé directed by Natasha Higdon plays at new Venture Theatre till October 12^th.

Higdon tackles this play’s sacramental language head-on, with Brook-like ‘holy theatre’. And singularly by inserting Wilde’s poem ‘Requiescat’ about his sister twice, twisting the work’s emphasis. It makes for two hours 30 with interval. There’s a paradox in Salomé being both Wilde’s first play to survive in the repertoire, in Lord Alfred Douglas’ very 1891 translation (Wilde supervised). It retains King James-sounding paragraphs, the “thy lips” to the penultimate line.

Don’t expect the Wilde of his comedies. It first attracted composers: the blazing (and scandalous) first operatic masterpiece of Strauss in Dresden in 1905; and Florent Schmitt’s 1907 Paris ballet, which inspired Stravinsky. Higdon’s response is also creative: to present this play isn’t enough. Unlike Wilde’s comedies it doesn’t play itself. For instance there was a congested production visiting Theatre Royal in 2010. Sometimes, like Yael Farber’s 2017 Salomé at the NT’s Olivier, directors write their own, but lack Wilde’s genius.

Teenager Salomé intoxicates men, is objectified. She herself is “amorous for thy body” she tells prophet Jokanaan languishing in a cistern, whom King Herod fears to kill. Besotted Herod promises Salomé anything if she dances for him. Salomé, spurned by Jokanaan, spurred by her jealous mother Herodias, demands something terrible. When she gets it, Salomé’s response appals Herod.

Salomé, Imogen Honey Strachan on this occasion, alternating with Maya Muthoni Khara the role of Page, is riveting. Sashaying between mute and implacable young woman demurring male advances, yet making amorous advances to the foul-mouthed prophet, Strachan projects a teenage girl: fearing the world yet flexing the limited power she has within it. It’s a power she might only get to exercise once or twice. Strachan is an excellent dancer gyrating, almost somersaulting in her dance for Herod. Her brief singing, and 10-minute apotheosis is overwhelming.

Khara is affecting in the minor role of Page: anxious about how Salomé turns her own lover The Young Soldier (Rocco Biancardi, a winning if brief study in pathos). Since one can’t write two reviews Khara’s own Salomé is reported as more cynical, entitled and sensuous, more conscious of her desires as of right. It says something both readings can be accommodated in one production.

But what inserting ‘Requiescat’ achieves, in this relationship of Herodias (Kasha Goodenough) with her daughter, twists the axis away from court male gaze towards the women. There’s emphasis and pause in their interaction, maximising hints in Wilde’s text. Goodenough’s Herodias reels from accusations of barrenness (absurd, given Herod’s non-track-record), determines to protect her daughter. Goodenough pivots Herodias past regal scorn through the beginnings of trauma.

Herod (Jeremy Crow) is both magnificent and very funny. Most consummate in speaking verse, projecting with fruity coercion like some billionaire shop-owner, he predicts points where harping on peacocks gets laughs (it does). Knowing Wilde tight-ropes a line between tragedy and farce, Crow sidesteps, unbelievably into Fagin in ‘reviewing the situation’ mode. I had to confirm that afterward. It earths laughter in the right places, allowing Crow’s Herod stature elsewhere.

I wish there had been more room for Jason Lever’s excellent, vocally distinct court fixer Cappa, since like Binacardi he’s relatively present in the first third: thereafter he acts as chorus. Jokanaan (Lester Seale) impresses physically in his silent agon, writhing above the cast. Higdon places him as much above as he is normally below in the cistern. Seale makes an appealing, reluctantly-eroticised Jokanaan, rather than suffering visions or prophesy. His Jokanaan repudiates his own and others’ sexuality: his misogyny an inverse of the court’s.

Higdon’s set design, aided by Simon Glazier and Karl Petrie is striking. A clutch of red velvet is scooped into a cascading mountain of material, where Salomé first appears topping it. Material swoops down, rising in two curtain flanks.

Petrie’s robes, red for women, white for men, rhyme with the set, and Richi Blennerhassett’s make-up strikes a red or black line across the eyes. More, there’s a cloud of black cloaks, and puppetry: dark shadowy forms with ritual shields and bough-forked wood, and three grinning white masks popped out of the central bustle. It’s the work of Lindsay Midall, Petrie, Higdon, and David Brownings; the last two also providing props like long red tickling shafts like a fletch of arrows aimed at Sebastian, but reaching up to Salomé.

Strat Mastoris’ complex lighting (operated by Ollie Wilson on 140 light-cues) sculpts Caravaggesque forms out of Jokanaan behind a gauze screen; and tracks moments with a touch of sulphur. There’s a precision to the moment’s moon-drenched clarity and gulphs of dark too. There’s one direct bulb-glare. Otherwise Mastoris’s design excels any lighting I can remember here.

I’ve not encountered Steve Hoar’s music, evoking mythic times, one track more overtly religious, otherwise a sound-world not far from epic film tracks. Higdon’s sound design (Cameron Davies working this) impresses: though it still suggests Herod’s court, its dynamic reaches out. And the choric moments of cast and performers is seamless.

Higdon has followed a ritualistic text with movement. Some of this mesmerises: processions, individual dances, at least one duet rapt and absorbing. There are a very few longeurs, like the opening five minutes; smudged narratives where an occult hint isn’t realised. With constant movement direction in a work of this scope, Higdon cannot do it all. This, and some vocal work are all that’s needed to ensure this production returns with outstanding presence.

Dramatically this is the most creative response I’ve seen live. Steven Berkoff’s 1989 Salomé also seizes ritual, applying a Berkoff logic: it’s a consummate, if magnificently constrained production and available on film. Here, a director’s reach should exceed their grasp, or what’s a production for.

Written by Oscar Wilde, Translator Lord Alfred Douglas Directed by Natasha Higdon, Stage Manager David Turton, Production Manager Katie Brownings

Set Design Natasha Higdon, Simon Glazier, Karl Petrie

Set Construction & Painting Simon Glazier, George Walter, Chris Tew, Sam Deards, Dan Tranter, Chris Dent. Tomasz Baraniecki, Chris Hauschild, Karl Petrie

Lighting Design Strat Mastoris, Lighting Rigging Strat Mastoris, Mireille Pedder, Lighting Operation Ollie Wilson

Costume Karl Petrie, Hair & Make-Up Richi Blennerhassett

Sound Design Natasha Higdon, Sound Operation Cameron Davies

Props/Puppetry  Lindsay Midall, Karl Petrie, Natasha Higdon, David Brownings

Props Natasha Higdon, David Brownings

Poster Photographer Ali Tollervey, Poster Editor Teri Murkin

Programme Tamsin Mastoris,

Publicity Photography Strat Mastoris,

Publicity & Social Media Greg Donaldson, Annabel Fenton, Natasha Higdon

Health and Safety Ian Black.

Many thanks to Wiz and Brett Fancy, Katie Brownings, Mike Ian Black, Family, Box Office FOH and Volunteers

Published October 12, 2024 by Simon Jenner