HEADLONG

With its high-flown symbolic language, archly repetitive musical cadences and pulsating undercurrent of erotic decadence, few British directors have been brave enough to tackle Oscar Wilde's magnetic biblical tragedy. Its engorged lyricism has in the past attracted mavericks such as Lindsay Kemp and Stephen Berkoff. Now comes Jamie Lloyd with a restless co-production between Headlong Theatre and the Curve, Leicester.

Lloyd drags Wilde into the here and now via strong choices that push at the play's themes and slam into its poetry. Con O’Neill's stocky, deranged Herod rules a military regime that smacks of the Middle East. Soutra Gilmour's set is a raised platform of gritty sand, with pools of oil in the corners and lighting rigs surrounding it. The location is dry, dirty and starkly lit (by Jon Clark).

The cast wears battle fatigues. That includes Zawe Ashton's nubile princess Salome, the spoilt vamp around whom the action pivots. Ashton plays her like a Beyoncé wannabe, vapid and self-absorbed in a one-piece body suit that zips down the front to reveal skimpy golden underwear. What she most craves is Seun Shote’s authoritative Iokanaan - John the Baptist, that is, chained in a cistern. Salome's attraction to this muscular prophet is not only sexual but something more that she lacks the ability to articulate or to understand. She's gotta have it, at any cost.

The play is an operatic riff on the destructive potential of desire and power. Headlong's brutal, wine-soaked performance revels in its moral (and literal) messiness. The leads don't hold back, plunging into Wilde's words with almost profligate physicality. O'Neill in particular takes some fabulous risks, playing Herod as a white-faced and dangerous clown whose unpredictable shifts from effete camp to tyrannical rage no one save Jaye Griffiths’s superb Herodias can check or soothe.

Just in case we needed reminding that the work of Oscar Wilde isn’t all droll one-liners and handbags, here comes a funky, insistent, modern-dress production of his rarely performed biblical sex sizzler.

It’s not hard to see why the Lord Chamberlain banned this one-act play; if he could see Jamie Lloyd’s pulsing take on it for Rupert Goold’s Headlong Theatre company, he’d get motion sickness from all that spinning in his grave. Soutra Gilmour’s set, about which a group of soldiers stamp as they guard the underground dungeon holding Herod’s prisoner Iokanaan (John the Baptist), has two key design ideas: mud and blood. By the end, everyone is covered in lashings of both, as Salomé drinks the dripping goo from John’s severed head. There’s no missing the powerful sense of a debauched kingdom on its last legs but this is not a production one could accuse of subtlety.

It’s none the worse for that, as Zawe Ashton’s frightened girl-woman struts her stuff über-provocatively, unzipping a combat fatigues boiler suit to reveal a slinky black bikini. It’s clear that she and her mother Herodias (Jaye Griffiths) have sexual allure as their sole, desperate bargaining chips in this oppressive man’s world.

Iokanaan (a roaring Seun Shote) repels Salomé’s advances, so her revenge must also come via sex, by dancing for her stepfather Herod (Con O’Neill) so that her decapitation fantasy can be realised.

O’Neill’s mercurial, bisexual ruler manages, fascinatingly, to be both butch and effete, masturbating furiously while Salomé dances in a see-through mini-dress and then whimpering as he realises the far-reaching implications of her request. This Herod doesn’t look like a man who customarily troubles himself with talk of messiahs — but what if that voice bellowing in the wilderness turned out to be right?

Jamie Lloyd's version of Oscar Wilde's biblical drama, which arrives at Hampstead after a tour, bears what has become the hallmark of co-producer Headlong Theatre: an extreme re-imagining of a classic text. Here, the original fin de siècle aesthetic of decadence is replaced by contemporary political, social and moral decay. New Testament Judea is presented in Soutra Gilmour's design as a dystopia peopled by all races, but since the black sand contains puddles of crude oil it is probably Middle Eastern. Everyone wears battle fatigues, including the royal family; Herod here is a petty, tyrannical warlord, who molests the soldiers of his guard even as he salaciously eyes his niece and stepdaughter Salome.

The whole family is distracted: Herodias the queen is maddened with jealousy, and Salome herself has had her head turned (no pun intended) by an infatuation with the imprisoned prophet Iokanaan. Zawe Ashton's Salome is very much aware of the power of her sexuality, but is still too immature to understand fully how to use it; the dance she performs for Herod is so deliberate in its gyrations and pumpings, as if she is copying the moves she has seen on gangsta rap videos, that the result is almost entirely unerotic as far as the audience is concerned. But it is not our response that matters, and Con O'Neill's Herod is driven almost into a frenzy by it.

Jaye Griffiths' Herodias looks on in horror until Salome demands Iokanaan's head, when she begins to crow in triumphant approbation of her daughter's exploitation of Herod's promise. Seun Shote's voice rings out as the imprisoned prophet, his words and accent suggesting a militant Rastafarian, especially when he addresses Salome as "daughter of Babylon".

This kind of setting allows performers to provide a welcome bathetic spin to the sometimes ludicrous poeticism of Wilde's lines: repeated remarks about the strangeness of the moon become soldiers' banter, and Salome's rhapsody about the whiteness of Iokanaan's skin can be ascribed to the extremity of her delusion. Only by the final few minutes, when Salome speaks lovingly to the prophet's severed head, are we sufficiently prepared to receive Wilde's tone unmodulated, with all else silent and still.

I just wanted to say how marvellous your production of Salome was when we saw it in Guildford last night - as someone who's studied Wilde and this play in the past, both at A & S level and briefly in my degree, it's a pleasure to finally see it performed. I never had the chance before. I must say it absolutely came alive for me (and my husband) last night - we were gripped. The set was perfect and the actors were amazing, particularly Salome and Herod. An inspiring and exciting performance and it reminded me again of just how good a playwright Wilde was, in all types of play. We all loved it.

I wanted to thank you for putting on Salome this week. Being familiar with Headlong's work I knew to some extent that it was going to be a great evening, especially as this play has not been done for so long. However, how wrong I was... it was a fantastic tour de force and a production to remember. Thank you again for being bold.

Had the best night at the theatre I have had for a long time experiencing Salome last night. Please, please, please convey my absolute gratitude and unbounded admiration to all involved.

Just saw Salome in Newcastle upon Tyne. Very intense. The production was excellent and effective.

Jamie Lloyd and Headlong Theatre are a winning combination with his raw and riveting version of Wilde's Salome at Theatre Royal Brighton.

Saw Salome at Brighton yesterday. Just wanted to let you know that it was truly fantastic! I struggled to put this into words after the performance such was the power of what I had seen! Bravo to all the cast and crew for bringing this tale to life, BRAVO!