Salome at National Pastime Theater

Chicago Reader - Recommended

"...Laurence Bryan's striking production for National Pastime Theater's Naked July festival not only gives us a long full-frontal look at Salome in the raw but displays the Baptist's junk from the first moment until the executioner blocks our view. The opening exposition is weirdly garbled, but the principal actors are all excellent--especially David Bettino as Herod."

Windy City Times - Recommended

"...The artists of National Pastime Theater are long acclimated to the risks of fitting epic spectacle to the close quarters of the Old Speakeasy's storefront. Fortunately, director Laurence Bryan and his designers have looked to Aubrey Beardley's contemporary illustrations for their visual cues: Joe Loffing's shadowy lighting and JJ Porterfield's evocative sound design lend an atmosphere of cosmic mystery to a wholly-integrated stage picture reflecting conceptual unity rarely seen on the off-loop circuit. The actors likewise immerse themselves in the formal rigor of their ancient world—even as Joshua Harris and Rebecca Wolfe bare it all in service of their personae—to render Wilde's flowery speech at once accessible and ornamental, generating tension and suspense culminating in the grisly climax when simmering passions burst forth in a triumph of obsessive desire."