Mark Jackson’s Salomania Explores Victorian-era Sexuality

Oscar Wilde (Kevin Clarke) shares a drink with Maude Allan (Madeline H.D. Brown) in the World Premiere of Salomania

Photo by David Allen

The world premiere of Salomania highlights two Victorian-era performers who did live and play in San Francisco. Bay Area auteur Mark Jackson reveals an overlooked facet of the ancient biblical story of Salome the teenage nymph. She performed the Dance of the Seven Veils for her father the king so that she could have the head of John the Baptist. Jackson has made it a new story by illuminating aspects of intolerance, censorship and judicial incompetence involving people surrounding Oscar Wilde’s scandalous play Salome.

Wilde’s late Nineteenth Century dramatization of the story focused on Salome herself and her inner conflict between baring herself to her father and her desire for John. Jackson’s play centers on the battle of a creative dancer to practice her art in freedom. In the early Twentieth Century Maud Allan had become known as the Salome Dancer because of her interpretation of the Veil Dance.

An ensemble cast of six plus a dancer explore the historically based tales of deviance and art. Maud Allan was put on trial in London in a suit involving obscenity and libel. Around those years, Oscar Wilde was put into Reading Gaol for homosexual love. In a loose chronological order, elucidated by slide projections, dramatizations of the trial and related incidents burst onto the three-quarter round Aurora stage space.

Mostly fluid staging moves through numerous scene changes, from an Old Bailey courtroom complete with a by-standing bobby and a judge wearing a deliberately ill-fitting peruke, to a café table on a low truck, to a dance floor, all occasionally interrupted by the invasion of World War I doughboy soldiers accompanied by the sound of incoming artillery fire. In just over two hours, the chronology of Jackson’s play spans decades. Announced by explosive sound cues, supertitles appear to set the period, from 1895 to “31 May 1918,” day three of the trial.

Salome herself is not really on trial here. But Canadian-born, former San Francisco resident Maud Allan (née Beulah Maude Durrant) is the subject of the Old Bailey’s wrath. After performing and designing in San Francisco, she moved to Europe and perfected her impressionistic version of the Dance to wide acclaim. Her exhaustive tour of England brought upon herself the criminal charges.

In Jackson’s production, Madeline H.D. Brown works this part with an ethereal grace and a ghostly presence. She uses self-involved dance movements animated by indeterminate impulses to waft the Salome Dancer through scenes like a drifting mist, unnoticed by most of the people she moves around and with. A couple dances to a tinkling piano while Salome watches. A couple enacts an erotic moment on a table while Salome dances around them. Her gentle writhing is sensual, and when she dances in pink chiffon on the upper level of a rustic wall of crates, chairs and burlap bags she moves with voluptuous physicality.

Her sultry strip scene takes her down to breast cups and harem pants. It is slow and seductive, but not really erotic like pole dancing or a real striptease. Costume Designer Callie Floor has set the time period and mood consistently for all cast members. For Maud’s dance costume she has recreated the imaginative design of Maud herself. The costume might have been risqué in the post-Victorian era but is tame by current standards. After seeing it, the judge declares that he is calling for the intermission.

Jackson’s loose plotting moves from a café table to the incoming doughboys. The table conversation between Oscar Wilde and the Salome Dancer lacks focus and dynamics. The stage area becomes many things, from a courtroom to a war zone. The courtroom scenes are the most effective and the most humorous because Judge Darling is not in control of his courtroom. Ensemble member Kevin Clarke plays this part as an inept victim. He also plays Oscar Wilde with smooth aplomb.

When Judge Darling tries to interrogate Wilde’s lover and enemy he encounters snide remarks and supercilious abuses. Liam Vincent gives his Lord Alfred (Bosie) Douglas character an insouciant flippancy. Vincent cleverly works the judge’s name by pointedly separating the title and the name. Bosie taunts short-tempered Judge Darling with his prissy moves. Salome drifts through the scenes. Bosie even flirts briefly with the Salome Dancer. Vincent also plays a sturdy Soldier and a passable Bartender.

Jackson makes the violence of the First World War a metaphor of the fight against sexual repression, especially of sodomy and lesbianism. He even delves into the plight of “a child suffering from an enlarged clitoris” and states a propos of nothing that “Orgasms are of great interest to the Germans.” I would recommend seeing this intellectualized speculative play for the aesthetic values of its production and to prepare for a slimmed down, more intelligible version.

Salomania plays through July 22 at Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison Street, Berkeley. Tickets ($30 to $48) are available on-line at auroratheatre.org or by phone at 510.843.4822.