Well, the curtains opened to find amongst others a lady in the nude standing in front of a man, she just sat down and draped herself for a while then came back dressed in underwear... corset and stockings.
The man who killed John the Baptist was wearing a coat throughtout until he went down the hole where John was , he took his coat of to reveal nothing , leapt down into the dungeon and came back covered in blood which Salome , as she clutched him, also became covered in ... I just wondered why they were nude !
A
There was a South Bank show about the preparations for this Salome and IIRC the design "concept", including the naked ladies, came from Pasolini's
Salo, a film version of de Sade's
100 Days of Sodom. Again IIRC, the fact that the (invisible to me) diners on the upper level of the set were passing these women around, like passing the port, was intended by the director and designer as a sign of general decadence and brutality. (Not sure if Pasolini accounts for the nakedness of the executioner?)
I thought the show was, er, excellent in parts. I wasn't entirely sold on the idea of explaining Salome's depravity in terms of her having been abused by Herod - not sure spelling that out added anything, although I always thought the idea was that she was a product of and scapegoat for a corrupt society.
