Prompt 21, Dorothy

I'm sorry this is late, I lost track of time and also struggled to find a performance I have recently been to that received any reviews! I searched for at least 10 different performances I've been to in the last year or two, and finally had to go in the way-back machine.

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/19/blood-and-passion-in-a-new-salome/

This review is over-all well written, but there are some organizational problems that make it, in my estimation, a less than great review. The most obvious of these is that the description of the set and the staging is a throw away, the last paragraph of the review. It seems to me that reviews are most helpful when they help a reader who has not seen the performance envision it in their mind. The sets for this staging were particularly interesting, with a dark, dystopian aesthetic that reminded me of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. Without that information at the beginning, the reader could, quite naturally, imagine a very traditional pseudo-Babylonian look which frames the performance in a different light. The costuming is never mentioned at all, which further separates the reader from the performance and avoids more possible venues of analysis (especially considering that the Five Hebrews, characters in the opera, were dressed as modern day Hasidic Jews, an anomaly amongst the non-specific,  vaguely futuristic garments worn by all the other characters).

I am also curious about the introduction referring to the “bravely and marvelously macabre production,” without really describing what makes this production more macabre than any other. He later references the Grand Guignol when speaking of the final scene (in which Salome hold the decapitated head of John the Baptist), but again, this didn’t capture the actual production, which wasn’t any darker than Salome’s story usually is, and, as Grand Guignol implies, didn’t feature a more realistic, special effects assisted beheading. To me, this again misses an opportunity to really capture what made this performance unique. In that final scene, this Salome practically straddles the head of John the Baptists, rubbing it against her crotch as it bleeds bright red stage blood profusely. This scene did not seem to be, as the review implies, a marvelous dark romp, but the logical conclusion to a Salome portrayed more as hysterical (with all the misogyny implied) than seductive. I don’t bring this up to say that the reviewer should have shared my interpretation, but rather to say that by not showing the characterizations that set this production apart, he fails the reader.