Salome

How disheartening must it be for actors to look out into an auditorium which is not much more than 10% full on a Saturday evening – so it was at Headlong’s visit to Richmond Theatre.

Before it started I would have said that the good people of Richmond are an uncultured bunch more used to thrillers and farce, but by the end I wished I’d been with them watching Britain’s Got Talent or whatever else they were doing.

Why on earth did Oscar Wilde (for it is he) write a charmless, humorless ‘play’ based on a gory biblical scene? It’s more of a dramatised scene than a play and staging it seems rather pointless.

It’s been given a fresh dramatic interpretation on an elevated stage of oily mud (?) with striking lighting and despite the meager audience numbers the cast give it their all, though the shouting hand-ringing and physicality did become rather relentless.

You can try as hard as you like, but with material like this you don’t stand much chance of succeeding.