Oscar Wilde's Salome

Oscar Wilde's play "Salome," regardless of any given production's quality, always offers at least two opportunities for stunning stage business. The first is the so-called dance of the seven veils, which the titular princess of Judea performs for the pleasure of her lecherous stepfather; and then there is the ghastly kiss Salome shares with the severed head of the prophet Iokanaan, known to most as John the Baptist. Black Moon Theater Company's current version, directed by René Migliaccio, indeed fills one's veins with fire during these iconic segments, but it otherwise peaks too early and then fails to escape from or at least vary its ponderous tone.

The Gospel of Mark tells of the chaste princess Salome, who's scorned attempt to seduce John the Baptist leads her to strike a bargain with her skeevy stepfather, King Herod Antipas. Obsessed with his stepdaughter, Herod readily agrees to give Salome anything she desires if she will dance for him. After a tantalizing striptease involving seven veils, Salome demands the head of John the Baptist, which horrifies the superstitious Herod. Wilde's 1893 script retells the grisly story with so much eroticism and élan that it was banned from English-speaking stages for almost 40 years. And yet Migliaccio's austere staging, though nicely spruced up with huge projections of India Evans' gorgeous mixed-media collages, feels bloodless and utterly without humor.

It's hard to imagine, for instance, that Wilde wouldn't want us to chuckle a little as Herod desperately offers his stepdaughter 50 of his prize peacocks instead of the detached head she has requested, but here Alessio Bordoni plays the deluded king for pathos. And despite an expert execution of Natasa Trifan's undulating choreography during the racy veil dance, Karina Fernicola-Ikezoe's Salome comes across more like a huffing parody of a petulant child than a rebuffed virginal seductress, remaining at full-on tantrum throughout.

Presented by and at the Flea Theater, 41 White St., NYC. July 13–23. Tue.–Fri., 9 p.m.; Sat., 3 and 9 p.m. (212) 352-3101, (866) 811-4111, www.theatermania.com, or www.theflea.org.