International
In 1901, within a year of Wilde's death, Salome was produced in Berlin by Max Reinhardt in Hedwig Lachmann's German translation,[28] and ran, according to Robbie Ross, for "a longer consecutive period in Germany than any play by any Englishman, not excepting Shakespeare".[29] The play was not revived in Paris until 1973 (although Richard Strauss's operatic version was frequently seen there from 1910 onwards).[30] Les Archives du spectacle record 13 productions of Wilde's play in France between 1973 and 2020.[30]
The American premiere was given in New York in 1905 by the Progressive Stage Society, an amateur group. A professional production was presented at the Astor Theatre the following year, with Mercedes Leigh in the title role.[31] The Internet Broadway Database records five New York productions between 1917 and 2003.[32] The Salomes included Evelyn Preer (1923), Sheryl Lee (1992) and Marisa Tomei (2003), and among the actors playing Herod was Al Pacino in 1992 and 2003.[32]
The play was given in Czech in Brno in 1924, and in English at the Gate Theatre in Dublin in 1928 (directed by Hilton Edwards, with Micheál Mac Liammóir as Jokanaan).[33] In Tokyo in 1960 Yukio Mishima directed a Japanese version in a translation by Kōnosuke Hinatsu which, The Times reported, "rendered Wilde's rhetoric into the measured cadences of fifteenth-century Japanese".[34] A later Japanese production was seen in Tokyo and subsequently in France in 1996.[35]
Britain
In Britain, the Lord Chamberlain's consent to public performance still being withheld, the first production there was given in May 1905 in a private performance in London by the New Stage Club, in which the performance of Robert Farquharson as Herod was reportedly of remarkable power.[36] Millicent Murby played Salome, and Florence Farr directed. A second private performance followed in 1906 by the Literary Theatre Society, with Farquharson again as Herod.[37] The costumes and scenery by Charles Ricketts were much admired, but the rest of the cast and the direction were poor, according to Ross.[38] A 1911 production at the Court Theatre by Harcourt Williams, with Adeline Bourne as Salome, received disparaging notices.[39]
The ban on public performance of Salome was not lifted until 1931. The last "private" production, earlier that year, featuring a dance of the seven veils choreographed by Ninette de Valois, was judged "creepily impressive" by The Daily Telegraph.[40] For the first sanctioned public production, at the Savoy Theatre, Farquharson reprised his Herod, with real-life mother and daughter casting, Nancy Price and Joan Maude as Herodias and Salome. The production was deemed tame and unthrilling, and the play – "gone modest and middle class" as one critic put it – was not seen again in the West End for more than twenty years.[41]
A 1954 London revival, a vehicle for the Australian actor Frank Thring, made little impact, and it was not until Lindsay Kemp's 1977 production at the Roundhouse that Salome was established as a critical and box-office success, running for six months in repertory with Kemp's adaptation of Our Lady of the Flowers.[42][43] That version was a free adaptation of the original, with an all-male cast, switching between French and English texts and using only about a third of Wilde's dialogue.[42] A 1988 production by Steven Berkoff in which he played Herod, was seen at the Gate Theatre, the Edinburgh Festival and at the National Theatre, London. It focused on Wilde's words, relying on the skills of the actors and the imagination of audiences to evoke the setting and action.[44] A 2017 production by the Royal Shakespeare Company, described as "gender fluid", featured a male actor, Matthew Tennyson, as Salome.[45]
