In 1758, Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote a chastising letter to his former colleague (and editor of the Encyclopédie) Jean le Rond d’Alembert. Rousseau’s criticism centered on d’Alembert’s proposal for the establishment of a theater in Geneva, whose “Lacedaemonian” culture, he lamented, lacked the “urbanity of Athens.” D’Alembert’s essay drew a connection, which Rousseau took up in his response, between the arts and mores. But where d’Alembert considered the potential consequence of this entertainment as nothing more than an increase in the “fineness of tact” and “delicacy of sentiment,” Rousseau saw an impending degradation of the virtues that held together the public and private sphere of that small city.
Today, raising this Rousseauian consideration is, as Allan Bloom noted, “most naturally viewed by us with suspicion as arising from illiberal interest of party or sect.” This is both too true and too bad, especially when a play like Yaël Farber’s Salomé comes to the Shakespeare Theatre Company, located in my very own polis of Washington, D.C.
When I heard an adaptation of Salomé was in the works, I decided to do a little prep-work, which included reading and listening to Salomé-related sources: Wilde, Matthew and Mark, Josephus, Strauss, etc. This all, however, turned out to be rather unnecessary, since adapter and director Farber, “drawn to [the] silence” of a woman she considers a “symbol upon whom all our fears and longings have been imposed” freely constructed her own Salomé from different narrative threads. (I left the show thinking that a better title for the play might have been Farber or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Imposing my Fears and Longings on Salomé.) Since this all leaves me exposed to charge that I am imposing my very own fears and longings on Farber, it is best to evaluate the production based on her own stated aims:
Farber’s Salomé (FS) lives under, what we are reminded time and again is an “occupying regime.” The “occupier” we all know was the Roman Empire, making it hard to understand why the director chooses to employ this loaded designation. After a few lines on “self-determination,” a Iokanaan (John the Baptist) who speaks only in Arabic and promises “liberation,” it becomes impossible to shake the sensation that FS is the author’s crude take on the relationship between Israel and Palestine.
FS’s perversity lies in the role-reversal trope Farber uses to get her message—which is as mystifying as the historical Salomé—across. In her retelling (actually, inventing), FS is cast as the “revolutionary agent” who, after spending the night with Iokanaan becomes convinced that his death, which will be interpreted as a sort of martyrdom for the people, is of greater benefit to the cause than his continued existence on earth. Just so the audience does not miss this charming calculus, we watch the Hebrew (read: Palestinian) guards converse before executing the deed: “How can I kill my brother?” Response: “Do it. Light the fire of the revolution.” So what’s the lesson? Give up your body in the fight against the so-called “occupier.” How so? Suicide bombings? Stabbings? Is this the profound take-away?
And here let’s invite Rousseau back into the conversation. If face to face with Farber, he might have asked her if she considered whether the effect of her “message” through the use of loaded words and imagery (torture, full frontal nudity) was intended to purify the mores of the audience, or was a sad exercise in harmful provocation.
The Shakespeare Theater Company does so much right that disappointments like this happen infrequently. So much the better for the soul of Washingtonians.
Salomé runs until November 8, 2015.
