Water runs over the curves of Salomé’s bare skin. Alone together in an underground prison, John the Baptist baptizes the Judean princess.A bit further down, Farber (if she is quoted correctly) offers this historical howler:
Instruct someone to imagine Salomé in the nude, and this is probably not the scene that comes to mind. But South African playwright and director Yaël Farber’s take on the biblical story doesn’t follow the typical version of events. “This adaptation of “Salomé” is the redefining of a story that we think we know, from the Christian scriptures and from Oscar Wilde’s stage play and Richard Strauss’ opera, and many other versions of her story,” says Farber. “It is about putting a woman at the center of her own narrative once again and taking political agency in a situation [where] she has been described as a supporter [in] her own story.”
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“It’s a revisionist version,” she says, “but I’m not sure that anything isn’t a revisionist version. When historical events have been recorded 300 years, at least, after the events have occurred, we’re talking revisionist on some level.”Three hundred years, at least? The Gospel of Mark was written no more that about 40 years after the events, and the accounts in the other Synoptic Gospels and by Josephus were written within a generation of Mark. This is still ample time for distortion, but let's stick to the actual chronology.
Also, the use of Arabic in the production was noted in the earlier review, but it is spelled out and evaluated more fully here:
Most of the play is performed in English, but Iokanaan speaks only Arabic. In truth, John the Baptist would have spoken neither. The choice sets Iokanaan apart as an outsider, but nestled against an already modern lingual backdrop, the use of Arabic stands out, and not in a good way.The earlier review was noted here.
“My original hope was that we could include Aramaic in the text,” Farber says. Confronted with a “massive time constraint,” she thought better of it. “But it also seemed a very beautiful way to just bring in the polyglot of the culture that was Jerusalem, and in fact, there are several cast members who speak French, and I would love to in future versions include those languages too.”
Breaking free from linguistic reality creates a filter, Farber says, that allows people to better understand and relate to their own stories. While a lovely sentiment, the intention seems half-baked. Utilizing a tongue familiar to contemporary ears is a distracting choice that has been used more successfully in Farber’s past.