Playwright: Oscar Wilde
At: The Side Studio, 1520 W. Jarvis
Phone: ( 773 ) 973-2150; $15
Runs through: March 20
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 one-act 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.
Note: Salome is running in repertory with When Women Wore Wings, an evening of monologues by women, runs Sundays at 7 p.m.