★★★½☆ A Biblical melodrama of lust and destruction that may stretch the boundaries of West End taste.

The press night began late, not because Wilde’s Salomé is still considered dangerous — though it was banned in Britain until 1931 — but because Gesher Theatre had come from Tel Aviv with an Israeli cast, a programme thanking the Israeli embassy and Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and VIP attendance from London’s Jewish community. The turnout rivalled Bevis Marks and Central Synagogue on Rosh Hashanah. Security was unyieldening: water bottles emptied, bags searched, bodies frisked.

A lone protestor shouted about Gaza from the gallery, briefly applauded before disappearing. Unofficially, champagne chatter afterwards pointed to Sir Len Blavatnik — his family foundation already stamped on Tate Modern’s 2017 “Blavatnik Building” — as a quiet force behind the staging. Influence can keep things orderly, but it couldn’t stop the visible exodus of British theatregoers from the upper rows. Whether that was prompted by political unease or aesthetic disappointment, we can’t quite say. Those who slipped away early missed moments of invention. They might have felt safer at The Importance of Being Earnest with Stephen Fry, another Wilde revival that hosted press the same night across Theatreland — and which also landed flat with critics. A bad autumn for Wilde, it seems.

So does Wilde’s decadent play, once unperformable, still offend in the 21st century? Not exactly. Instead, director Maxim Didenko and Gesher deliver an experiment: unusual for the West End, intermittently daring, though not always able to carry the full weight of its own aspirations. As Didenko brings the play to the Theatre Royal Haymarket — the very stage where two of Wilde’s celebrated works once premiered — it inevitably invites scrutiny. Expectations are high, and resisting their weight proves a demanding task.

This biblical story has been reimagined many times: in scripture Salomé is a marginal figure, but Wilde turned her into a decadent symbol of reclaimed sexuality and destructive allure. Here, the familiar arc plays out: Salomé becomes infatuated with the prophet Jokanaan — Wilde’s stylized rendering of John the Baptist — who spurns her. She then dances for Herod at his birthday feast and claims her reward not in jewels but in the severed head of the man who rejected her. She kisses it, and is executed.

Designer Galya Solodovnikova surrounds the action with Art Deco geometry: a piano bar, gold drapes, and a lamp above a shallow pool that dominates the stage — a bowl of water that inevitabely recalls a baptismal font. Soldiers in flak jackets stand guard while Herod (Doron Tavori) totters about in a dictator’s coat, drunk on wine and power, always reaching for another glass. He is narcissistic, led by desire, and spineless: a man captivated by his stepdaughter Salomé. Herodias (Lena Fraifeld), in her well-fitted evening gown, often looks the more convincing temptress than her daughter: cold, calculating, the sort of distant mother who knows how to survive in a court of men.

Neta Roth’s Salomé, in a shimmering dress, plays like a sulky teenager at a school prom — bratty, glittering, but never fully dangerous. She lacks the force to seduce Herod or to make her final demand feel inevitable. Shir Sayag’s Jokanaan is depicted in a raised box, though technically he should be below, in the cistern’s basement. Blindfolded and bare-chested, his prophecies are sung in tones that are more haunting than sensual. While physically confined, his voice and ideas reach far beyond, granting him the magnetism Salomé craves.

The show builds, as it must, to the dance of the seven veils. This should be the climax of erotic tension — the moment so irresistible Herod promises half his kingdom. Instead, it turns into a muddle. Roth thrashes in the pool at centre stage, topless under a sheer robe, before ending up in Bridget Jones-style flesh-coloured knickers. Sensual dancing and Spanx go together like a standing ovation and a fire alarm: you can technically have both, but nobody enjoys the clash.

The water adds spectacle but no seduction, leaving the dance oddly unerotic. Yet in a play revolving around John the Baptist, , the pool – originally a symbol of purification – cleverly becomes a site of lust and death. The severed head is also hideously convincing, and Roth’s kiss lands with a shudder. She is then shot, rather than crushed as Wilde prescribed, and the lights snap off.

The music, by Louis Lebe, is the safety net: carrying tension and mood across 100 uninterrupted minutes, saving the evening when acting and direction falter. But the ideas scatter. Wilde’s text, rich in metaphor and decadence yet often dismissed as surface glitter, collides with Strauss’s operatic shadow and Didenko’s instinct for theatrical canvases. Wilde’s Salomé was never about psychological realism. He imagined her as an elemental force — critics argue he saw women less as people than as symbols. Didenko leans into that strangeness: Roth’s Salomé is all cruel youth without depth. But she never persuades as the seductress who could make Herod risk his throne.

Desire, destruction, acting styles, even the time and place all arrive together — like Everything Everywhere All at Once, only without the fine tuning that film found in chaos. Or, like a well-rehearsed Olympic swimming routine that never wins the gold.

Without the powers of Cassandra, I predict Salomé an uncertain West End future. But Didenko remains a bold creator with instincts worth following. He insists the play is about innocence and monstrosity colliding, and he feels that paradox keenly. After The White Factory it feels like a sideways step rather than a stried forward — at least in winning British theatre hearts. Yet his biggest challenge now is to move past both the politically engaged criticism of London’s liberal establishment and the venom spat by fellow exiles who would rather see him fail.

He is also not alone. In the same season, another émigré director, Alexander Molochnikov, staged Seagull: The True Story with Ingeborga Dapkūnaitė, accused of being too clever and tripping over the scale of its own aspirations. Perhaps this is a new Russian tradition in exile — dazzling theatrical experiments that London critics cannot quite digest — or perhaps it is simply a matter of fine tuning. But whose role is that? After all, who can direct a director’s vision? We can only choose to accept, or to turn away.

Salome by Oscar Wilde

Performance Dates:
Tuesday 30 September – Sunday 11 October 2025

Location:
Theatre Royal Haymarket
London, SW1Y 4HT

Running Time:
1 hour 40 minutes (no interval)

Tickets:
trh.co.uk