Luna Noctiluca

My overall impression

After having some time to digest the show, the only word that comes to mind about the show is uncertainty. I’m uncertain what the director wanted to say with the piece and I’m uncertain what the take away was supposed to be for the audience. Partially, I feel this is a script issue, as the original play “Salome” has always felt for me a piece of theatre that doesn’t care about it’s audience, it feels that it exists without the need of an audience and misses out on the symbiotic relationship of theatre and audience. I think the show has a ton of potential, but it still lacks specificity of intent. There were quite a few interesting choices with the show: the inclusion of the Woman as a side by side commentary with Salome, the use of dance (admittedly, needing a bit more rehearsal), and the use of modern music are all things that, with more rehearsal time, could have really added to the experience. Though I do wish the language had be updated as well. I do believe the anachronistic nature of the show was a choice, but I don’t necessarily know what it’s supposed to mean. There were a lot of problems with diction and annunciation, most of the time I had to focus more on what the actors were saying, and less on what they were doing. With a script as fatty as this, I think more cuts could have been made, to allow for the actors to actually do more with the language instead of feeling the need to push the language out without any action backing it up. Many monologues felt lugubrious, and self serving, working in circles that didn’t serve to move the piece forward and led to me checking out every now and then. More work with the language would’ve also helped because not many of the actors felt grounded with the text and instead were always ahead of the moment because they felt insecure about the language. I know a lot of the problems this show faced during it’s rehearsal process and I applaud everyone in the project for their strength in moving forward and continuing on, and it is unfortunate that the company had to run into so many problems, especially with such a complex and difficult show as this. And unfortunately, the problems the company faced took a huge toll on their performance.