Issue No. 607
Culture
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10 - 16 October 2002 Issue No. 607 Culture |
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If only...
A Rabbit, A Scorpion and An Elephant, a new children's play at Hossaper Theatre, leaves something to be required, writes Nehad Selaiha
Children's plays are rare in Egypt and, with rare exceptions, uniformly mediocre. The majority are aggressively didactic and depressingly parochial, and more often than not the humour is forced, the characters wooden, the language stale and turgid and the message drab and trite. Even last year's wildly successful Halahotta and Barakotta, a musical comic romp, lavishly produced by Essam Imam (a private entrepreneur) as a calculated commercial risk (which paid far beyond his wildest dreams), and brilliantly staged (with sparkling sets, splendid masks, sumptuous costumes, two TV stars and gorgeous Russian dancers) in the deliciously whimsical, tongue-in-cheek style characteristic of director Khaled Galal, did not rest until it had the imaginative wings of its child-hero, Halahotta -- a gifted, rebellious budding artist (impishly performed with endearing spontaneity by Wael Noor) -- sadly clipped. At the end, he is forced by children and grownups alike to repent and convert to the consensual belief that only obedience, conformity, toil and rote- learning can guarantee happiness and success in this world, and even in the hereafter.
Fortunately, however, the preachy bits which were dutifully trotted out at the conclusion of every episode in the hero's delightful progress (as if to forestall any criticism that the play was perhaps celebrating unruliness and placate any irate parent) were so brief and clumsy they made little impression on the children in the audience and were soon drowned in the riotous laughter triggered by the hero's cheerful defiance and fantastic escapades. Despite the shabby final scene in which Halahotta is made to see the error of his ways, surrender his wild dreams and promise to reform and conform, the final impression one carries away is of joy and liberation.
In terms of content and intended message, the recent and nearly as successful children's play, A Rabbit, A Scorpion and An Elephant (another commercial enterprise launched this time by producer Arwa Qaddura with playwright Nabil Khalaf and director Nasser Abdel-Moneim) seems far more liberal and progressive. Here, a group of school children air their grievances against parents and teachers in the break and openly criticise the way they are brought up, treated and educated. To work off their anger, they perform a play with masks in which they cast the symbols of patriarchal authority (the headmaster and head teacher) as shameless hypocrites and greedy villains. The world of grownups they imaginatively project is pictured as a jungle in which nature is wantonly despoiled, the clever and knowledgeable exploit the naïve and ignorant, the week are trampled underfoot and the deformed or different are savagely mocked and denied human rights and dignity.
In the four scenes which make up the play, the author tackles the issues of nature conservation, the protection of wildlife and the environment, cheap labour and economic exploitation, democracy and the freedom of speech, discrimination on the basis of difference and the manipulation of science and technology for unethical ends. Though the setting remains throughout basically the initial one of a school playground, as the play progresses, it gradually acquires, in a dreamlike way, the dismal look of a ravaged rain forest. There, elephants are enslaved by an unscrupulous capitalist crow masquerading as a harmless rabbit (the schoolmaster) and blindly driven to cut down the forest, destroying everything on their way, including the eggs of a mother turtle. When hunger drives them to rebellion, they are drugged by Dr Scorpion (the head teacher) -- an equally unconscionable scientist in cahoots with the crow, and subjected to a genetic engineering operation to make them insensible to hunger. Ironically, the bereaved mother turtle (delightfully impersonated by Caroline Khalil) is tricked into assisting the scorpion as nurse and vengefully chases the elephants with a gigantic hypodermic, in one of the funniest scenes in the play, not knowing that the real culprits are the ruler of the rain forest and his scientist.
Vexingly, however, this clever modern fable, which left alone would have made an exceptionally refreshing children's play, was repeatedly interrupted by the intrusion of unrelated issues, redundant characters, superfluous dialogue, stodgy comments and lacklustre songs. At the beginning of scene two which takes us to the rain forest, the sight of the broken trees and the ground strewn with the remains of crushed turtles and their eggs is supposed to herald the beginning of the fable. Instead, after a cursory, mawkish comment on the sorry sight by the leader of the chorus of school children, we are disconcertingly sidetracked into the issue of discrimination against pigmies as two of them (who posed as trees in the first scene) walk into the forest, announcing they have been appointed teachers at the school, thus making the play double back on itself and revert to the first scene. As the school master and head teacher reject them with much jeering and the children take their side, the scene develops into an impassioned plea against all forms of discrimination.
A worthy cause indeed and one which, some would say, should sanction the flouting of dramatic logic. Unfortunately though, noble causes alone do not make good plays. The rain forest fable does not actually begin until scene three; and even then, it is not left alone. When it ends, the play doubles back once more on itself and we are back in the school and the issue of discrimination debated in scene two joins hands this time with that of democracy and the right of free expression. The children decide that headmasters should be elected not appointed and hold an election in which one of the pigmy teachers emerges victorious. Though the message is clear, it is voluminously spelt out in song and dialogue and repeated over and over until the life is beaten out of it. In retrospect, in the quiet of the study, one can try to find tenuous connections between the disjointed parts of the play and possibly argue that the elections in the final scene were a direct and logical consequence of the lesson the children learn from the rain forest fable. In the heat of the performance, however, subtle links, if they do exist, are hard to detect, even by adults and only a foolishly optimistic writer would bank on them.
Commendable as it is, the list of good causes the play ambitiously proposed to defend was simply far too long. Inevitably, some of them were not adequately dramatised to make a real impact and the play seemed loosely constructed and far too crammed. And to get into it everything he wanted, Khalaf frequently resorted to direct verbal statement which rarely cuts any ice with children, especially when set to raucous music, badly pre-recorded and played as a voice-over at a deafening volume. But even when recited live, without mechanical distortion, the uniformly rhyming dialogue was oddly peppered with unfamiliar synonyms (e.g. using posterior for hips), names (e.g. Mary Antoinette, Picasso, Cezan, Moliere, the Grimm Brothers, the Mafia and the Champs Elysees) and allusions (e.g. to Brecht's play The Caucasian Chalk Circle and the fashion in Egypt in the 1960s of going to Budapest for plastic surgery), most of them beyond the comprehension of many of the adult audience, let alone the kids.
They were obviously there solely for the rhyme, and no other reason. And it is perhaps this passion for rhyme that made Khalaf blithely ignore the limitations of the cognitive scope of the age-group he was supposedly targeting as well as the glaring fact that too much rhyme tends to give dramatic dialogue a tedious, benumbing, and artificial singsong accent which can dilute the characterisation, making the actors sound alike however differently they look, as well as defuse many a tense dramatic confrontation. Mr Khalaf could of course plead (I can almost hear him) that the text was intended as a script for an operetta, as it is labelled in print, which would justify his zealous adherence to rhyme throughout whatever the cost; and by way of excusing the use of words beyond the grasp of his young audience, he could argue that the play was meant as a family entertainment which catered for different age-groups, including adults. In theory, this may sound a legitimate defence; but in the practical terms of the live performance, it is of little use.
As a drama, A Rabbit is fitfully confusing and irritating. In performance, however, it is visually colourful and exciting, with a simple, efficient set, evocative lighting, vivid masks and costumes (by Islam Zaher), lively choreography (by Magdi Saber), and a cast of seasoned comedians (Ahmed Aql and Ahmed Rateb), upcoming stars (Caroline Khalil, Rola Mahmoud, Nevine Rif'at, Mahmoud Ezzat and Ayman El-Nimr), a chorus of children led by Rana Nabil and Youssef Nasser, and a group of dwarfs led by the talented trio: Khaled El-Sha'er, Nahed Ibrahim and the young and very cute May Mohamed. More than anything, it is thanks to the actors that the text's faults were cheerfully ignored by the audience who soon realised that the best way to get the most out of their evening was to give up trying to make sense of the story and enjoy each scene in isolation and the actors' antics.
Neither Ahmad Aql (as the fat and round crow/ rabbit/headmaster) nor Ahmad Rateb (as the tall, thin scorpion/head teacher) took his part seriously, but their presence on stage and their physical interaction, even when silent and still, sparked off a sense of joviality and sent ripples of laughter into the auditorium. When joined by the aristocratic-looking and sounding Caroline Khalil in her funny turtle-costume in the third scene, the trio made the rain forest fable into a hilariously grotesque nightmare reminiscent of Ionesco. In contrast, the trio of dwarfs were given too many speeches and little to do, and, ironically, it was their geniality and quaint physical presence, rather than all the harangues they made, which won the audience to their cause.
Rana, the 11-year old bespectacled leader of the chorus of school children, was also given far too much to say without any real dramatic reason, except perhaps that she is the daughter of the author. Indeed, I believe that the play's bad construction can be partly explained by Nabil Khalaf's keenness to build up her modest part into that of a heroine. Already she has played the lead in two of his operettas -- The Princess's Red Butterfly two years ago and The Wooden Mother last year and he is obviously intent on making her a star. It is a legitimate ambition, but it would be unwise to rush it. Rana has plenty of raw talent and confidence and can sing and dance tolerably well; but she still has a long way to go. Exposed indiscriminately so early and so intensively without training, she is in danger of falling into the trap of clichés and, indeed, has already developed quite a few. She has an irritating habit of standing erect whenever she speaks, pushing her face forward toward her addressee, with the specs perched on the tip of her nose, and moving her head from side to side while batting her eyes quickly and holding her palms open on both sides of her body. With proper coaching, this can be easily cured and she can blossom into a lovely, versatile performer.
But what am I doing acting like a nitpicker instead of being grateful? Whatever its faults, A Rabbit, A Scorpion and An Elephant was a joy to watch, especially with a sea of laughing children around one. It was a brave venture by a shrewd business woman and happily for her it has worked and after three months continues to draw full houses.
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