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Article: Theater; A Seamy `Salome"; Wilde's Opulence, Updated and Intense
- Article from:
- The Washington Post
- Article date:
- January 4, 1989
- Author:
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"Salome'," Oscar Wilde's florid biblical drama, is probably
unplayable today on its own terms. But I'm not sure that you make it
any more viable by changing the locale from the palace of Herod in
Judea to a bar called Salome"s in Argentina, circa 1936, and treating
the whole overheated affair as an exercise in high camp.
Such is the tactic of Robert McNamara, one of the city's most
adventuresome directors, but also one of the most erratic.
Regrettably, "Salome'," the first of three productions that Scena
Theatre will present at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre, is entirely too
representative of his erratic mode.
McNamara evokes the names of Alfred Jarry and Antonin Artaud,
patron saints of ...