Salomé, Gate Theatre, Dublin
Whose Salomé is this anyway? Can a play written
in halting French, revised and corrected by a number of French
Symbolists, and translated by Lord Alfred Douglas be attributed to
Oscar Wilde without complication? Or can a once-radical production,
now almost 20 years old and looking none the better for it, be
properly accredited to director Steven Berkoff when the Gate's
third incarnation has been re-staged for a predominantly new cast
by Alan Stanford?
If we choose to ignore the widely circulated (and not entirely scotched) rumour that Al Pacino is to "guest star" during this production's run - something that would set an ugly precedent for a theatre, bumping a cast member for an unrehearsed celebrity, devaluing the supposed seriousness of this enterprise - it is hard to determine any fresh merits to this production.
The first problem is the play. Even Wilde's most forgiving supporters would have trouble defending the dull repetition of his one-act verse drama, from which the playwright's usual wit and colour is ruthlessly expunged.
Berkoff recognised that the play needed a further translation, moving it towards a new language of performance in which movement functions as lyric. Which leads us to the second problem.
Where Berkoff, a trained performer rooted in the rigorous physical discipline of Jacques Lecoq, could inspire actors into feats of fluid motion and liquid grace, neither Stanford nor movement coach Olwen Grindley can do the same with an uneven cast. Only Marty Rea, as the Syrian - eyes full of longing, hair apparently styled with stardust - can make these movements seem weightless, or their logic understood, while Karl Sullivan, icily impressive as the executioner, performs stillness in the way that only an accomplished dancer can.
Fiona O'Shaughnessy, the original replacement Salomé, preserves perfect poise throughout. But the chorus of sycophants and supplicants, dressed in tuxedos and flapper gowns, appears to have been directed as though by Chinese whispers: whatever the original message may have been, it reaches them awkward and mangled. Without that conviction, no experimentation can succeed. Speech here, delivered over Roger Doyle's milky piano score either as painfully elongated notes or with the sudden timpani of frivolous chatter, is mercilessly robbed of effect. The most egregious moment, for my money, comes long after Salomé's fateful dance, here performed as a mimetic striptease that leaves nothing to the imagination and still less to the intellect. For the fourth time Salomé asks for the head of Jokanaan (John The Baptist to you and I, played with much-needed spirit by Malcom Adams). O'Shaughnessy's body forms a sharp right angle, the demanding bow of a defiant child. Doyle's piano thuds with some finality. Stanford's Herod emits an agonised scream. There is nowhere left to go. But, alas, the tragedy grinds on, cold and lifeless as a theatre of taxidermy, reducing a parable of lust and obsession to the screaming of a spoilt brat.
Runs until Apr 7
