In just four years and three productions, director Yael Farber has become a firm favourite. This time though, she’s both playwright and director and I often worry that doubling-up leads to a lack of healthy creative tension, and so it is here, I’m afraid.
She first staged this show in Washington DC three years ago, departing from her intention to stage Oscar Wilde’s play and creating her own very different take on this biblical myth. I don’t have a problem with that – it’s all fiction to me – but the dialogue is weak and the structure poor; it just isn’t a good play. She did have a dramaturg, Drew Lichtenberg, but judging by his sycophantic, barely readable programme essay, he isn’t going to challenge anything. So, as playwright, I’m afraid she fails.
As director, her staging is packed full of invention, beauty and captivating imagery. Movement, design, lighting, music and sound all come together cohesively and the virtually continuous singing by two women – Israeli Yasmin Levy and Syrian Lubana Al Quntar – is haunting and extraordinarily beautiful. It lives up to her previous work – Mies Julie, The Crucible and Les Blancs – as a thrilling production, but sadly that isn’t enough.
There is an older Salome (‘nameless’) as narrator and a younger Salome (‘Salome so-called’) who rarely speaks, both beautifully performed by Olwen Fouere and Isabella Nefar respectively. I don’t know what language Ramzi Choukair’s Iokanaan was speaking, and the surtites were so low on the back wall, most were invisible (an easily rectifiable fault, which for some reason hasn’t been rectified!) but I enjoyed the physicality of his performance.
Like Common, sharing the Olivier stage, the play is a bit of a muddle, and it does make one wonder if the QA process at the NT is fit for purpose.
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