Download Salome - Side Project Theatre

Chris Jones
'Salome' steps up in its small space
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
February 22, 2005
http://metromix.chicagotribune.com/stage/158723,0,2073171.event?coll=mmx-stage_heds
Most of Oscar Wilde's famous plays are works of personal obfuscation. “Salome,” the infamous
tale of the revved-up young woman who danced for the pleasure of Herod and the head of John
the Baptist, is a troubled drama of personal revelation.
Given the repressed era in which Wilde lived, it was more corrosive than the naked breast of
Janet Jackson. The same Victorian clucks who yukked it up at "The Importance of Being
Earnest" (while missing most of the irony) ran screaming from "Salome," an admittedly purplish
dissection of spiritual and sexual desire. Only the great Sarah Bernhardt had the nerve to
produce the show, in the Paris of 1894. Generations of college students have tried their hands
at "Earnest's" rakish Algernon and twittering Cecily. But "Salome" has been restricted to the
countercultural and the avant-garde.
Most reviews observe that it's rarely performed. But in avant-garde-loving Chicago, I've
reviewed Steven Berkoff's dance-heavy, intensely stylized version for Performing Arts Chicago;
a Footsteps Theatre affair heavy on religious imagery; and a bump-and-grind production at the
Circle Theatre that featured copious nudity and a driving techno beat.
With the possible exception of the Berkoff — a whacked-out interpretation with its own, distinct
agenda — the fascinating little "Salome" at The Side Project is the best of the bunch.
Fused with terrific masks and puppets from Meredith Miller, Jimmy McDermott's clever
production is sensual, smart, visually compelling and quite literally in one's proverbial face. It
also features an intensely inventive treatment of that trickiest of theatrical props — the severed
head of John the Baptist. To describe how Salome here gets to fondle the object of her desire
would spoil the surprise. Two of the three key performances are excellent. As Salome, the very
youthful Eva Bloomfield (a name to watch) precisely hits the character's dichotomies. She's a
victimized aggressor; a seductive innocent; a fetishized fetish-lover. That's exactly right. So is
Steven Marzolf's passionate Jokanaan, who rips away at Herod's gates like a man possessed.
Jimmy Driskill's tenor Herod is the only performance to screech and float over the top, but it's
heartfelt acting and not a debilitating wound.
The Side Project is shoehorned into a beyond-tiny Rogers Park storefront on Jarvis, so close to
the "L" that you know when the train doors are closing. It reminds me of the old Shattered Globe
space on Halsted Street.
Even by storefront standards, The Side Project operates in a minuscule space wherein actors
and audience are spatially indistinguishable. Given the sophistication of this production, it's also
a very exciting place to see a show. There's a whiff of that fearless kind of theatrical energy that
Wilde would surely have appreciated far more than seeing the umpteenth incarnation of Lady
Bracknell.
Hedy Weiss
Side Project revels in biblical salaciousness of 'Salome'
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
February 22, 2005
www.suntimes.com/output/weiss/cst-ftr-salome22.html
RECOMMENDED – Fashionistas take note: The Dance of the Seven Veils now being performed in the
Side Project production of Oscar Wilde's "Salome" may very well be the next big scarf trick. It wouldn't
be surprising to see it turn up as part of a theatrical extravaganza on couturier runways. But even if this
doesn't happen, be advised that it is one of the sexier little mixes of seduction and fabric-twisting now on
view.
Best of all, the dance is emblematic of this successful production – the latest of several ambitious shows
mounted at this shoebox-size Rogers Park theater with a growing reputation. It also is another impressive
demonstration of the talents of director Jimmy McDermott, whose previous fascinating productions
include "Maggie: A Girl of the Streets" and "The 4th Graders Present an Unnamed Love-Suicide."
But before revealing the secret of the scarves and the seduction, "Salome" should be put in context.
Wilde's 90-minute play -- a mix of unabashed poetic lushness and fearsome biblical melodrama -- is overthe-top stuff, and all the more delicious for that. Denied a license for production in London in 1892, its
shock value was heightened further when the first edition of the play in English featured illustrations by
that master of art nouveau decadence, Aubrey Beardsley. His black-and-white drawings have clearly
inspired this color-streaked production.
The story, of course, is pure biblical salaciousness. Salome (played here by Eva Bloomfield, a dark beauty
currently a sophomore at Northwestern University) is the teenage daughter of Queen Herodias (Claudia
Garrison, perfect in her middle-age resentment), who earlier divorced Salome's father and married his
brother Herod Antipas (played with appetite by the beefy Jimmy Driskill), governor of Galilee.
This second marriage was denounced as sinful by Jokanaan, a k a John the Baptist (Steven Marzolf, as
ghostly pale and full of thunderous outrage and suppressed yearning as he should be), so not surprisingly
he is viewed as a threat to the kingdom. In fact, as "Salome" opens, he is in prison.
And to be sure, all is not right inside Herod's household. In fact, he lusts after his virginal step-daughter,
who is understandably revolted by him. And so, when he asks her to dance for him at his birthday bash
she initially refuses, until he offers to grant her any wish she makes.
As it happens, Salome has just encountered Jokanaan for the first time and has been driven to mad lust by
the beauty of this wild-eyed, bearded and entirely incorruptible young man -- a man who has rebuffed her
in no uncertain terms. Unable to entice the lover she wants, she impulsively decides to have him killed
and demands that Herod live up to his oath and deliver the head of Jokanaan to her on a silver tray. What
follows is one of the more graphic scenes of necrophilia ever devised – one for which McDermott has
found a simple but dazzling solution that makes the usual use of a blood-stained papier-mache skull seem
laughable.
In McDermott's up-close-and- personal environmental production (enhanced by Jared Moore's skillful
lighting), the audience takes its seats as the actors are already in frieze positions on the set, as if caught in
motion during the disastrous party at Herod's palace. They are outfitted in formal wear that might have
been designed by Beardsley, but is the work of Jihee R. Kim, a novice costume designer of immense
talent.
We immediately sense the tension in the room, as well as outside the palace, where Naraboth (strong
work by David Dastmalchian), a handsome young soldier who also adores Salome, is deftly manipulated
by the princess who seeks access to Jokaanan. From that point on, disaster is in the making. (In a little
Wildean footnote, Naraboth himself is the object of desire by Herodias' handsome young page, wellplayed by Ben Alvey.)
The cast of 15 has a solid hold on Wilde's tricky florid language. But it is Salome's transformation – from
threatened innocent to a young woman who has quickly realized her tremendous sexual power – that is
the make-or-break element in this play, and Bloomfield pulls it off astonishingly well. Her ritual shedding
of a blue silk frock for a black bustier fit for dancing is as effective as the switch from white swan to
black in "Swan Lake."
And as for the dance itself, it involves more wrapping and knotting of long red silk scarves than a Christo
sculpture, with Salome's servant (the graceful Kristina Klemetti) executing much of the handiwork. By
the time it's all over, there is no safety net for Salome. She's too hot to handle.
Kerry Reid
CHICAGO READER
February 25, 2005
www.chicagoreader.com/listings/static/listings.html#SALOME
CRITIC’S CHOICE! Oscar Wilde's 1893 drama about the stepdaughter of Herod and her fatal attraction
to John the Baptist (called "Jokanaan" in the play) may not be the best thing Wilde ever wrote, but it is the
most unfettered: the master of English drawing-room comedies created his most idiosyncratic play in
Salome, its perfumed poetry teeming with similes and high-flown images. Jimmy McDermott's clever,
assured staging for the Side Project in the tiny Side Studio captures both the play's outsize passions and
its delicate interludes. Setting it in a sort of 1920s salon, McDermott recalls both the Gay 90s of Wilde's
heyday and the story's time period, just before the enormous upheaval caused by the advent of
Christianity. A cast of 15 commits to the elaborate language without ever appearing to notice its excesses,
particularly the mesmerizing Eva Bloomfield in the title role.
Rick Reed
WINDY CITY TIMES
February 23, 2005
www.wctimes.com/gay/lesbian/news/ARTICLE.php?AID=7486
I have been an avid supporter of the side project company since its inception ( in 2000 ) and have always
been thrilled by their surfeit of imagination, taste, and creativity, when the constraints of budget and space
are so obvious. This tiny theater company in Rogers Park has about it portents of greatness, producing
some of the most intelligent and mesmerizing work seen on a Chicago stage.
That’s a big part of the reason I’m so disappointed with this outing. Oscar Wilde’s Salome, originally
penned in French and based on the biblical story of King Herod, his daughter Salome, and their ill-fated
encounter with John the Baptist, has a dubious past. A marked departure for Wilde, best known for his
erudite wit and drawing room comedies of manners, Salome garnered mixed reviews in its day. The oneact has a formalized diction that harkens back to the Old Testament. Its storyline concerns desire in a very
marked, tragic way…and its depiction of homosexual love and Salome’s shameful yearning for the
prophet were probably heady stuff when this was first produced around the turn of the twentieth century.
Critics and scholars disagree on the intrinsic worth of the script.
Personally, I found the script enthralling (although it often lapsed into redundancy), and Wilde’s depiction
of Salome’s lust for John the Baptist compelling. When she is scorned, her fury knows no depths (she will
kiss his lips regardless of whether his head is attached to his body or not). Her relationship with her
parents, King Herod (whose lust and indulgence for his daughter is palpable and disturbing) and mother
(who is every bit the conniving seductress her daughter is) is one of the most perverse in literature.
Unfortunately, the side project may have opted for something beyond their reach. Ambition can be a fatal
flaw, and it is here. Wilde’s script, in order to succeed, demands more. I have always been astounded by
how creativity has stood in for budget constraints in past side project productions (the wonderful Maggie:
A Girl of the Street and The Elephant Man come to mind) . This time, though, I’m sorry to say the
production looked cheap and unfocused: amateurish. Jihee Kim’s costume design is all over the board
with costumes that have the look of the Old Testament, the 1920s, and Victorian foppery, with little
discernible reasons for these choices. The set doesn’t mesh with period or mood. And penultimate
moments, like Salome’s Dance of the Seven Veils, are bogged down by lack of movement space and lack
of grace from Eva Bloomfield, who portrays Salome with a kind of deadpan mien that’s never believable.
On the other hand of the acting spectrum, Jimmy Driskill’s Herod is overblown, with a kind of one-note
intensity that one might call scenery chewing, if there was much scenery to chew. Director Jimmy
McDermott, whose talent has previously been on astonishing display here, makes bad choices. The only
hope for a production of Salome to work under these constraints would have been a highly stylized
minimalism.
Every company, especially one as young as this one, is permitted its stumbles. The great work the side
project has done to date still bodes well for its future, even with this misstep, which has the most
forgivable of goals: lofty ambition.
Web Behrens
CHICAGO FREE PRESS
February 24, 2005
www.chicagofreepress.com/news/freestyle/theater/index.html
The bold choices of director Jimmy McDermott make themselves apparent before "Salomé" even begins.
As soon as you enter the skinny storefront theater that is The Side Studio, you're in a different world. The
audience sits opposite one another, in rows parallel to the two long walls of the narrow, rectangular
staging area-while the actors pose, marvelously frozen in place as you take your seat.
You're practically in each other's laps, which makes it all the easier to examine the barefoot actors'
strikingly handcrafted masks (by Meredith Miller). With everyone so tightly arranged, it almost feels like
a Mardi Gras party. Except it's quiet. Somehow, having the silent actors so nearby causes everyone to
hush.
Also the director of "The 4th Graders Present an Unnamed Love-Suicide," Side Project member
McDermott serves up, unsurprisingly, an unconventional staging of this Oscar Wilde anomaly. The
single-act "Salomé" is poetry as drama, a retelling of the biblical tale of John the Baptist-specifically, his
death at the bidding of the seductive title character, who performs the legendary Dance of the Seven
Veils. (The show runs in rep with "When Women Wore Wings," an assembly of one-woman monologues
about iconic females both fictional and real.)
While undoubtedly dynamic, "Salomé" still feels overlong. Not everyone in the cast has settled into their
roles, though a few more performances should help. Undoubtedly Wilde's language is tricky: Several
characters must deliver lengthy speeches-refrains, really, full of flourishes. Jimmy Driskill as Herod
sustains his the best. Less successful in finding range amid the repetition are Claudia Garrison as Salomé's
mother and Eva Bloomfield as the petulant princess herself. Bloomfield gives good face-she'd do well on
a soap opera, where the cameras love to linger in extreme close-up on a schemer's mug-but her voice
doesn't yet display the same range of emotion.
McDermott has designed some surprisingly kinetic blocking for the tight space, and it doesn't all click:
The pacing guards, for example, at all four ends of the performance space just help add to the feeling that
you're in a cattle run. Still, Bloomfield gives us a nice twist on the dance of infamy, adding veils to her
body rather than removing them-a reverse striptease that somehow remains seductive. If only the entire 75
minutes cast the same spell.
Tom Williams
Wilde’s wordy biblical tale too much to handle
ChicagoCritic.com
February 18, 2005
www.chicagocritic.com/html/salome.html#salome
Salome is Oscar Wilde’s 1891 biblical tragedy of forbidden love, lust and revenge that many think he
ripped-off from the Belgian playwright, Maurice Maeterlinck. Wilde admits to frequent plagiarism: “It is
the privilege of the appreciative.” Who knows? I can state is that Wilde’s use of fugue cadence in a
irritating Old Testament verse contains so much bible-speak that I quickly turned-off the wordy speeches
that contained too much parallelism and repetition. Example:
“I am amorous of thy body, Jokanaan! Thy body is white like the lilies of a field that the
mower hath never mowed. Thy body is white like the snows that lie on the mountains of
Judea, and come down into the valleys...”
William Butler Yeats called Wilde’s Salome dialogue, “empty, sluggish and pretentious.” I call it
overwritten and much too flowery. The side project usually presents worthy ambitious shows that stretch
their tiny storefront’s assets and challenges their ensemble. Their Maggie: A Girl of the Streets was
creative and interesting.
Unfortunately, Salome doesn’t work at all. My problem comes with Oscar Wilde’s script that contains
stuffy prose in a King James Bible style so filled with symbolism and repetition that it aggravates more
that informs. Next, despite some nifty staging, the cast was overwhelmed by the piece. Too often shouting
substituted for emotional emphasis and the rapid fire speech patterns from Jimmy Driskill as Herod and
the too quick monotone from Eva Bloomfield as Salome sank the show. In mounting Salome, the side
project got caught in that trip that storefront theatre troupes often fall prey— doing works that are too
difficult for the assembled cast—and—doing plays that audiences don’t want to see. I believe both apply
here.
I like the energy, enthusiasm and ambition of the side project theatre company. It’s this boring play and
the miscast leads that doomed the show for me. Many will come to see Salome because it’s by Oscar
Wilde and that is fine, just don’t expect Wilde’s razor-sharp wit. Salome isn’t one of his best efforts. I’m
sure the side project will bounce back with another terrific show; they have too much talent and positive
energy in that little space on Jarvis street.
Rolf Rosenkranz
ChicagoCritic.com
February 18, 2005
Salome is lost in translation
www.chicagocritic.com/html/salome.html#salome
Somewhat Recommended – the side project has performed several cutting-edge shows in its intimate
venue in north Chicago, which barely seats three dozen visitors. In Salome, the actors use every inch of
space, including some behind a row of chairs for the audience. Unfortunately, this great way to involve
theatergoers becomes daunting here: What the troupe lacks in resources, it often seems to compensate for
with volume and speed, making ones ears hurt and brain skip plot points.
Based on the New Testament’s gospels of Mark and Matthew, Oscar Wilde’s Salome is a decadent, erotic
farce about a girl discovering her sexual powers and a dimwit Galilee king during the 1st century AD.
Wilde wrote Salome in French during his 1893 stay in Paris – in the year he discovered his
homosexuality.
Such back stories are nicely referenced at the side project by French background chansons, Jihee Kim’s
French costumes and Meredith Miller’s Greek masks. But much of what outraged censors a hundred years
ago is lost in this production: Eva Bloomfield’s Salome is full of pathos, not childish sensuality, when she
attempts to wring a kiss from the incarcerated prophet Jokanaan (Steven Marzolf). Only in the later
scenes – when she dances for her stepfather, the king Herod (Jimmy Driskill), and then demands
Jokanaan’s head – is she the juvenile devil that is very Wilde. These scenes also showcase director Jimmy
McDermott’s good sense for adapting iconic material: While long stretches of the play seem like fast
recitals, Salome’s dance and Jokanaan’s beheading give the actors time to play and the audience time to
breathe and enjoy Salome as a play in the literal sense of the word.
Intimate play portrays powerful women
By Laura Nikiel
LOYOLA PHOENIX
February 23, 2005
http://www.loyolaphoenix.com/news/873753.html
"When Women Wore Wings" is a delightful play featuring Chicago playwrights in an evening of seven
one-woman monologues. It depicts monologues from seven different female characters, either real or
fictional, who have played exceptional roles in history. These characters include a famous trapeze
performer, Snow White, Eve (the biblical character), Rapunzel, Medusa, Amelia Earhart and Christa
McAullife (the history teacher aboard the shuttle Challenger which exploded in 1986). Each woman gives
an empowering speech about her mission in life or the myths she has inspired.
The Side Project Theater, where the play currently is being performed, is small and intimate. There are
only about 25 seats, which puts the audience members in close quarters with all the action. The setting for
the play is by no means elaborate. Each character is presented with props and a costume which reflect the
characters' respective era. The only lighting is a single spotlight focused on the character who is speaking,
allowing all attention to be focused on the performer.
The play ties all the individual stories together in an attempt to prove that women don't play passive roles.
Women are portrayed as powerful, emotional beings that have a great impact on society. For example, in
Medusa's monologue, the point made is that she wasn't evil for fighting for the man she loved, even
though she ultimately was turned into a hideous monster. This monologue also unveils a scarcely known
fact that when Medusa died, Pegasus was born from her severed body, which shows that beautiful things
are born from women who have loved. A striking line from the monologue suggests, "Anyone can kill,
but only gods and women can give birth."
Each monologue is designed to show the audience that each of the characters has been misinterpreted in
someway. The characters tell their stories from their own perspectives, including the emotions that they
were feeling during specific historic events. The speeches are sarcastic, raw and detailed. The language is
believable and comical because of the inclusion of blunt profanity and speeches about the characters' sex
lives.
The actresses' performances are truly exceptional. Each woman seems to invests her whole self into her
performance and the audience can see the emotions flowing from her. They are energetic, powerful,
comical and sexy. Their performances are so personal and believable it's easy to forget they aren't actually
the characters they are portraying. These actresses execute their roles in a way that evokes sympathy for
them and their hardships.
The Side Project Theater is located at 1520 W. Jarvis Ave. It runs on Sundays at 7 p.m. from Feb. 20
through March 20. Tickets are $10 a person. To reserve seats call (773) 973-2150.