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Al-Ahram Weekly 21 - 28 January 1999 Issue No. 413 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 21 - 28 January 1999 Issue No. 413
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Focus Economy Opinion Culture Features Living Travel Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters 
Falling into glory
By David BlakeLast Days of Socrates, Mansour Rahbani, Cairo Opera House, Main Hall, 12 January 1999
After sailing up to the dizziest heights of radical chic, Socrates fell, like Icarus, into the black holes which surround humanity. The Athenians, who had put up with every sort of politico-moralistic attitude and whim of Socrates thought enough was enough, and gave him a goblet of poison to drink. He drank it. His death became one of the great commotions of history, like those of Jesus, Ghandi, Caesar. The going of these men split nations, changed lives, customs and boundaries. Each helped to mould the earth's moral shape.
It is not easy to write about this type of creature, but to make musical comedies about them is impossible. They simply do not fit the mould. Ghandi has been a film, Julius Caesar almost everything, Socrates has been an opera. But for the Rahbani Company to make a musical operetta out of the end of Socrates' brilliant, flashing life was a risk, a hostage to chance. They have relied on Offenbach's classical operettas as models. The same mix of wit, cynicism, sheer energy and political ironic quips move it along entertainingly enough.
What goes far beyond Offenbach is the second half of the story, as the black holes, visible in the first part, open up beneath Socrates and finally swallow him. He was engulfed by humanity's preposterous, disaster ridden pretentiousness.
Socrates was not an easy man to dispose of. He was an unique object, great of endeavour. His theory of the soul as a life principle, going beyond all human understanding, was the thing that finally caused the Greeks to fear him and give him the poison chalice.
They, the race who had coined the phrase nothing in excess, were terrified by his intellectual dreams of eternal bliss. He was a veritable spider, weaving a web composed of Stoic, Epicurean and Democratic philosophies. He weaved his web with biting wit and an often erotic earthiness which enraptured and repelled. As the late R G Bury had said: "There had been no better men than Socrates, but the Athenians were right to put him to death." It is not safe to tell all the truths at once; society will collapse.
With humour, Socrates had carried human life to a beautiful apocalypse of ecstasy. As a man, he was a shiner, and as with so many such men, Oscar Wilde, Tchaikovsky and Mozart among them, it is governments that have to cope.
All these threads are beyond the scope of any operetta but the brave, ambitious Rahbani Company did a job which must be admired for its honesty. For one thing, they are "theatre" in all its gaudy splendour, almost musical and almost Racine. Huge gestures and tirades. If you need an orgy, send for the Rahbani group. They will go over the top because that is the land they inhabit.
They never stop moving. The show tears along, leaving one breathless, abused, astounded and enraptured. How dare they, so successfully, jump over the edge of taste and convention. Where is Socrates? He is there, centre-stage, enjoying an orgy with the prostitute Theodora, doing a shy shimmy dance, twinkle-toed like the rest of the gorgeously beautiful teenagers he is reputed to have abused. All very straight-lined stuff, not as curvaceous as the Socratean myth reports but as dance, quite first-rate.
All the dance was beautiful to behold. The horizontal side-stepping of Lebanese dance movements were huge throughout the performance, with great variety and verve. Such leaping, and it is an opera. It is rather like the Greek saying, change or die.
Mansour Rahbani is a Renaissance man. He is the poet of the play, the producer, the designer and the music's composer. His music, taped, is excellent and well-played by the Kiev Symphony Ochestra, conducted by Vladimir Serenka.
Socrates himself was acted by Rafiq Ali Ahmed. Singer, dancer, orgy leader and poet of the inexplicable saviour, he was tireless and appealing as he approached his end.
Xantippi, his wife, was Hoda Haddad. She had a large part and sang it firmly and tunefully, and acted it with wit and intensity. Her words rang out.
Theodora, Carole Samaha, was beautiful and touching, singing her 1930s tunes surrounded by apocalyptic caryatids.
Kritias, the Greek leader, was a slithery, great, active reptile, flying through the air like a red tree snake, enormous cloak billowing out behind. He made a Bolshoi spectacular. He was an artist of the cloak.
At the beginning of the play everything is dark, then out of the gloom the trumpets and entire brass of the orchestra bray and blast. It is a tremendous din for an opening which comes off.
Silence, followed by a voice. "Athena", loudly shouted. Then other voices, "Athena", from the heights of the top of the Parthenon, until the entire theatre reverberates with the word. We must be prepared for anything.
Then comes the play, the story of the last days of the incubus of Socrates. Greece paid a bitter comeuppance for his death. It would have paid even more bitterly had he lived.
When it is almost over, when the magician Socrates has quaffed his poison and staggers to centre-stage, the entire cast spring out from all sides, dressed in black robes of mourning. They leap and soar from every angle, high or low, and the stage becomes a mad melee of bodies, turning the stage to chaos. They rip off their black cloaks and hurl them and other garments high into the air. The noise is ecstatic. Some dancers, with heroic daring, jump into the crowd, and the stage clears. Nothing there. Socrates has gone. From high, seemingly from the clouds, comes Athena.
The dancers have all become white angels. Europe, or something equivalent, will be reborn from the ashes of the Phoenix, which Socrates set alight.
