Neta playing Kitty in Gesher Theater's Anna Karenina[Missing Credit]
“I see her as a sexy, female Hamlet. And I use every part of me to play her. I give everything I have, because she’s so much.”
Salomé is provocative, twisty – and when her romantic advances towards the John the Baptist are spurned – ultimately deadly. She unleashes a dance that the show’s publicists promise – “will echo through the ages”.
I’ve seen a seven-minute teaser and – without giving any spoilers – I can safely say I’ve never seen anything like this on stage before. Mamma Mia!, it ain’t! Roth’s path to the lead role in this prestigious West End revival reads like the stuff of dreams.
Aged 16, she wrote her own play and at 18, she performed it at a fringe festival in Jaffa. At the same time, Gesher Theatre Company – which is based on Jerusalem Boulevard, just down the road from where we meet – was looking for an actress to play a girl with bipolar disorder for a play called Anybody Here.
“Someone recommended me because they’d seen my show and I came to audition,” Roth explains. “I got the part and joined the company, which became my home.”
She describes the theatre company, founded by Russian immigrants in 1991, as “the highest establishment for theatre in Israel. It has always been my favourite.”
She began soon stacking up classical acting credits, including performances as Juliet in Romeo and Juliet in 2022 and Kitty in Anna Karenina in 2023. She also won roles in Israeli TV shows. Her star was rising when a new idea took hold.
“I don’t have any family in London, but I saw David Tennant in Hamlet when I was 12 and decided then and there that that was what I wanted to do, and that London was where I wanted to be.” She found digs in Barnet, north London, and was just getting used to using the Northern line when Lena Kreindlin, director general of Gesher, called her. “She said, ‘We’re doing Salomé. It’s going to be in English, it’s probably going to end up in London. You might want to consider coming back to Israel in order to be back there eventually.’”
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Netta in scene from Gesher Theatre's telling of Salome[Missing Credit]
And so Roth gave up her London dream (for a while), flew back to Israel and was cast. Salomé (pronounced like Naomi to echo the Hebrew female word for “peace”) premiered at JaffaFest in 2024, before returning to the main house at Gesher this year. Directed by Russian Israeli Maxim Didenko, whom Roth describes as both “a fugitive, because of Putin”, and “an absolute genius,” the play was an instant hit.
“Choosing to do it in English was a bold choice, but because it was so unusual, we had a full house over and over again,” Roth recalls. “Speaking Oscar Wilde’s poetic words in our modern time is luscious – lustrous,” she enthuses. “It’s so fun. But I’m a nerd. I really love Shakespeare – I came to school quoting Shakespeare. I don’t know why but I had this fascination. So this whole process is a serious dream come true.”
Israeli newspaper Haaretz praised Roth during the local run as “living on stage through every moment, bringing an impressive emotional force despite her young age”. And now the play transfers to London, bringing Roth back into the heart of the theatre scene she was so keen to break into two years ago.
“I’ve been in the Haymarket as an audience member and I was awestruck. I think West End theatres have something that is hard to explain. There’s something about the buildings, their history, that gives them an energy and soul that we don’t have in Israeli theatres. We have different things – we have the Kotel – but it’ll be 200 years before our theatre halls feel like the British ones.”
Neta playing Kitty in Gesher Theater's Anna Karenina[Missing Credit]
While preparations for the transfer are in full swing, there is, of course, one black cloud on the horizon: the challenge of bringing an Israeli theatre company to central London at a time when anti-Zionist protests are everywhere we turn. Is Roth worried about how Gesher will be received? “It’s funny, because artists are the opposite of politicians,” she says, calmly. “We don’t come as the voice of our government. People confuse the Israeli government with the Israeli people.
“The majority of the Israeli people – a sizeable majority – wants to end this war. I demonstrate. On a Friday, I take a bus to the border and demonstrate. On a Saturday, I demonstrate in Hostages Square, in Tel Aviv, for the immediate release of all our hostages, dead and alive. And then on a Sunday, I do Salomé. So although there’s something liberating in art, it’s a difficult weekend.”
Roth also sees parallels between the show and the times we’re living through. “Salomé is a play about the cycle of violence. She’s so miserable because she’s filled with hate, because she only knows hate. And I think that’s what the play shows us, that hate can be prevented if you choose love, if you choose compassion, if you choose peace. When someone screams ‘From The River To The Sea’, they aren’t trying to bring peace. I want peace.
“Jewish people being held and abused – and we can’t do anything. So I demonstrate because I want it to stop.
“People should ask themselves: ‘What have we done for peace today? Not ‘Who have we chosen to hate today?’”
There’s something about the history of West End theatres that gives them an energy and soul we don’t have in Israeli theatres
Roth was in Israel on October 7. The next day she travelled to meet the children of Kibbutz Be’eri who had been evacuated from their blood-soaked community on the Gaza border. “For two weeks, they didn’t know if their missing people were murdered or kidnapped,” she explains.
“I remember holding hands with a class of 13-year-old girls who were screaming because they had just been told that one of their friends had been murdered. In my head I was singing, Help! by The Beatles, because I knew that I couldn’t cry in front of them.
“I had come there as an actress to make them happy, and I stayed in a therapeutic role. I could not break down in front of them.
“And still I refuse to hate people in Gaza. I refuse because I know that Hamas does not represent the people there who also want peace.”
With all this in the background, I wonder how Roth and the Gesher company are able to focus on the task at hand.
“I was raised by two therapists, and Jung says that everything in life, every emotion, is interaction. So when I meet any character I treat it as such, I immerse myself. Acting is fun, I love the mathematics of it, of working out what goes where.”
Her character has lots of lines. “Very interestingly, until her father figure comes on stage, Salomé doesn’t shut up from the very moment she gets on stage until he enters. She talks and talks and talks for around 20 minutes. Then, he enters the stage, and she barely speaks.”
The London transfer coincides with the High Holy Days, but Roth is not fazed about being away from her actual family for the chagim. “Gesher theatre is a tight family, so it’s really fun. I’m not sure how we’ll spend our time when we’re off stage – I want to see lots of theatre and an exhibition.”
She recently enjoyed the stage adaptations of Fleabag and People, Places, Things. And she wouldn’t be upset if she bumped into David Tennant at a showbiz party, or Fleabag’s Andrew Scott. “I really am such a big fan. They’re both virtuosic,” she says, smiling. “I wouldn’t be upset if I made it to Hollywood to do action movies or something, one day. But this, working in London, this is my actual dream.” t
Salomé by Oscar Wilde opens at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, London,
on September 30. Visit trh.co.uk to book. gesher-theatre.co.il)
Neta on stage in Israeli play Anybody Here[Missing Credit]