Salome by The Rabble - at Carriageworks

Salome is a young albino woman fed-up with her royal role often retreating to her private laboratory as an escape.

Melbourne based The Rabble Theatre Company have taken the sordid story of Salome and run with it to places that recall the styles of European artists like Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty and Romeo Castalucci’s installation of images.

Be prepared for an exhibition of collaborative contributions where the narrative falls away to reveal a warped world communicated through a mash of object, images, actions and emotions. Words are replaced with repeated actions, and bodies are choreographed into ordered chaos.

The biblical story of Salome (and its later reworking by Oscar Wilde) is used as the spring-board from which its ancient characters dive into the classic Australian back-yard complete with an on-stage swimming pool, linoleum flooring and esky.

The narration of the story is refracted and deliberately disjointed. At times this can make it inaccessible, yet there are rewards for investing in the nexus of ideas.

Recapping the original story, Salome is a doting daughter of Herodias who wins a wish from her step-father and Judea’s ruler, Herod, through dancing the dance of the seven veils. She chooses John the Baptist’s head on a platter to honour her mother’s wishes as John had condemned the marriage of Herod and Herodias due to her previous marriage to Herod’s brother.

The Rabble have turned the Aussie backyard into the backdrop for desires, drought and incest at the original turn of the century under the rule of the sinister and oppressive Herod.

The opening scene of The Rabble’s version sees us nestle comfortably back in our seats as a vocal soundscape, led by Salome (played by Mary Helen Sassman), lulls us with her repetitive blissful tones. This blissful curtain quickly draws away to expose malignant moral decay in a claustrophobic realm of disturbing behavioural loops and unquenchable desires.

Daniel Schlusser plays a dynamically physical Herod. His anger rises to threatening peaks as he completely annihilates a whole cabbagehead. His power erupts in the face of the fluid innocence of Pier Carthew’s John the Baptist.

This is experimental theatre on the fringe. Breaking the traditional writer/director/actor dynamic, Salome confronts and displaces the audience and hopefully intrigues enough to inspire a search beyond the immediate performance. The unfurling deeper meditations result in a belated respect and gratification.

In this world where desires are shackled and exploded, encounters are incestuous and threatening, and carnal pleasures are indulged, the albino Salome may be white but the essence of what unfolds is black to the core.