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In the interest of building out my presence here, I'm sharing a review I wrote two years ago after watching the play "Salome" on National Theater at Home (https://www.ntathome.com/products/salome)
Last night I watched Yael Farber's "Salome" via National Theatre at Home -- and it was an intense experience. One of the first things the narrator tells the audience is that the girl who danced before Herod is not named in the Biblical text, and a great deal of the story reinforces that the protagonist has neither name nor voice of her own. The script and staging have a strong ritualistic element. The text is nonlinear, the stage virtually bare but utilizing two turntables in the floor, and the motion often stylized -- especially the several scenes of violence, which still have gut-punching impact. John the Baptist speaks only in what I assumed is Hebrew. There are two women who pass through and around the edges of the action whose wordless(?) singing provides background music. The text includes many passages from the Song of Solomon, and some lines have resonance with the ancient, anonymous text called "The Thunder, Perfect Mind." Many of John's lines are pulled from the prophetic books of the Hebrew Bible. To my surprise, the Descent of Inanna also appears. At several points I wondered about the degree to which my familiarity with these texts made the show more meaningful for me when it might be less so to others.
One of the best parts of viewing was the dawning realization that this is *not* an expanded version of the story that appears in the Gospels attributed to Matthew and Mark. This is a Jewish story, and it has no interest in what the original text signifies to Christians. This is a story of Israel as an occupied land, of politics, power, religion, survival and compromise. It's about John as a prophet calling people *not* to "prepare the way of the Lord" (Jesus*) but to embrace their heritage and unify against Rome. And it's an indictment of Empire, colonialization, the hubris of conquerors, and the destruction of land -- any land. Which I found delightfully nervey in a play presented by England's National Theatre. Salome comes to embody the spirit not just of her nation, but of all those who have resisted oppression and been abused and "disappeared." This Salome is a close cousin of Antigone -- but where Antigone speaks eloquently and at length to the tyrant, Salome retains stubborn, triumphant silence.
There were times when I thought the script and production got a bit overwrought, and that some instances of theme and variation of the text and action got a bit heavy-handed, but I keep coming back to my understanding of the piece as a ritual of grief and defiance -- and so perhaps the heightened pitch could be overlooked. It would have been an entirely different play if it had been more restrained and/or realistic.
This isn't a play to watch "for fun." There's a lot of brutality, however abstract the presentation. It's highly political and deeply spiritual, although not "spiritual" in the way many people would think. It's intensely 'theatrical' and doesn't pretend to present facts, only convey a truth that transcends the plot. It could be considered a "passion play" -- if I can be forgiven for borrowing a Christian term.
*It wasn't until I watched the end credits that I learned the skinny, half-naked man with what looked like a begging bowl, who was on the edge of some of the scenes and had a few lines, was "Yeshua - the Madman." Jesus. It underscored the emphatic non-Christian nature of the narrative.
