Isabella Nefar in Salome. Photo: Johan Persson Salomé
Olivier Theatre, The National Theatre.
9 May 2017
4 Stars
Director and writer Yaël Farber follows up her National hit of Les Blancs with her reworking of the myth of Salome, and provides a beautifully staged production in the process. Colonisation, the abuse and mistreatment of women, and the subsequent rewriting and erosion of women from myth and history are the central concerns of the piece, still sadly relevant today.
The company of Salome. Photo: Johan Persson
The visual and aural narrative of the production is excellent, creating Carravagio-esque tableaus of beauty and violence to a beautifully sung score by the Women of Song. When you have the outstanding Olwen Fouéré, (I will never forget her performance in riverrun), as the Nameless narrator, (although she is the voice of Salomé), then you know the story is going to be powerfully told. Her voice fills the Olivier stage and auditorium, keeping the narrative clear. Ramzi Choukair is a beautiful and powerful John the Baptist and Isabella Nefar is haunting and mesmerising as Salomé. Paul Chahidi is an excellent, sinister Herod, and the whole company move wonderfully under the guidance of Movement Director Ami Shulman.
The company of Salome at the National Theatre. Photo: Johan Persson
The direction and design are absolutely beautiful, utilising the huge Olivier perfectly, creating astonishing imagery, rivers of water, sand, and, indeed blood, motifs that are layered with meaning throughout the production. Yet the heartbeat of the piece remains constant throughout, never flat lining, but also rarely raising the pulse rate and pacing up. It has a steady, almost too careful rhythm, and needed more dramatic impetus in places; I felt much the same of her production of The Crucible at the Old Vic in 2014. However, there is a great depth of performance and artistic power that makes this a mesmerising, at times hypnotic, evening.
BOOK TICKETS FOR SALOME AT THE NATIONAL THEATRE
Paul is a playwright, director, actor, academic, (he has a PhD from the University of East Anglia), teacher and theatre reviewer! His plays include Living with Luke, (UK tour 2016), Play Something, (Edinburgh Festival Fringe/Drayton Arms Theatre, London 2018), , (2019), and now The Miner’s Crow, which won the inaugural Artist’s Pick of the Fringe Award at the first ever Colchester Fringe Festival 2021. In lockdown 2020 he created the audio series Isolation Alan, available on Youtube, and performed online in the Voice Box Festival. He is the founder member of Stage Write, a Colchester based theatre company, and his acting roles include Rupert in How We Love by Annette Brook, first performed at the Vaults Festival 2020 and revived at the Arcola and at Theatre Peckham in 2021. Follow: @stagewrite_
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