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Still in the mood for a Wicked-style fan fiction that rivals its source’s weirdness? What about the criminally rotted horniness of Nosferatu? Imago Theatre satiates these lusts with an English translation of Oscar Wilde’s Salome, an early play using the biblical story of John the Baptist’s execution as a vehicle for his deeply 19th century appetites, set in the shadow of his infamous criminal conviction for homosexuality. Salome was so scandalous for its Madonna-like merger of sex and holy texts that it’s only been legal to perform in England for less than a century.
Salome opened Friday, April 11, on Imago’s richly dressed palatial set. Bible characters were verboten in English theater, so Salome was staged only once in Wilde’s lifetime, in France. The basic New Testament story goes that the tetrarch Herod Antipas gets so aroused by his stepdaughter’s dancing that he promises her anything she wants, up to half of his quarter-kingdom. She asks her mother Herodias, whom John keeps dissing, what she should ask for, and Herodias suggests John the Baptist’s head on a silver platter. Because he’s made such a spectacle of his oath—if the Bible does one thing, it warns against thoughtless vows—Herod agrees and orders John’s decapitation.
The gospel of Wilde fills in details in this allegory on the dangers of wielding seduction and desire, lurid enough to make the Song of Solomon seem tame. The beauty of Salome (Jaiden Wirth) is already so legendary that a young Syrian captain (Joe Cullen) is warned not to look at her lest her allure cause him misfortune (because of course Wilde writes a man telling another man not to look at a woman, duh). He writes her into a cunning schemer, putting her in control of John’s fate and retooling her motives for wanting him dead. John’s name here is Jokanaan (Max Bernsohn), which is honestly a great name for a hot dude who’s definitely ghosting you.
Herod Antipas (Jeff Giberson) lecherously yearns for Salome, but she’s demonically horny for Jokanaan, to the point it’s actually a bit uncomfortable as an audience member to watch her wax poetic and in lengthy detail about his white skin—honestly, when most of Portland theater still wrings hands over land acknowledgments, it’s a little audacious that a script like this got staged, which surely is how Wilde would have wanted things. Wilde’s witty observations about the moon come in the style of several ancient Middle Eastern poetry traditions, and play on what looks like an LED stage screen, another rich detail of Imago’s impressive stage dressing. The soundscape with the actors’ commitment makes it seem as if Bernsohn really is at the bottom of a cistern.
Diane Slamp plays Herodias maniacally, as though Helena Bonham Carter donned a toga. Veering into camp at times, her unhinged shrieks of fury at being unsupported by her husband momentarily caught me off-guard. She seems to access the place of real rage from someone who maybe doesn’t know how to channel their energies, making her stage time a fun watch. As Salome, Wirth’s voice becomes an ear worm as she admires every detail of Jokanaan’s body. Salome is plainly Wilde’s self-insert, but Wirth plays up the agency he wrote for her that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John missed a couple of millennia ago.
As with the suicide of the Syrian, the Dance of the Seven Veils and the show’s two executions are commentary not just on the male gaze, but the perils of wielding sexuality as a weapon. The Syrian disobeys direct orders and his own conscience because he wants Salome, while Herod can’t handle his transition from barely contained arousal to utter revulsion once Salome demands Jokaanan’s head and reveals she wants it for more than avenging Herodias’ honor. She gets what she wants—a man her mother hates, dead or alive—but loses everything when her stepfather turns against her. Wilde doesn’t fill in a punishment for Herod, other than having to follow through on a promise he made while in the mood, but one wonders whether Wilde saw himself more in Herod or Salome in this power exchange near the end of his life.
More than 130 years later, Wilde’s Salome still shocks, and Imago Theatre boldly commits to the bit down to every detail. It’s one of his stranger, more challenging scripts that Imago’s actors rise up to meet. It’s not every week that theater patrons get to see someone make out with a dismembered head, after all.
SEE IT: Salome at Imago Theatre, 17 SE 8th Ave., 503-231-958, imagotheatre.com. 7:30 pm April 18, 19, 25 and 26. 2 pm April 20 and 27. $30.