Moments of mirth
Nehad Selaiha enjoys a brief respite from war gloom at the Jesuits Cultural Centre in Alexandria
Of late, theatre-going has become a guilt-ridden experience. It gets more acute if the show is good; for a few blessed moments you forget the senseless devastation and bloodshed and revel in the beauty and creative vigour of humanity, then suddenly the guilt strikes with a vengeance; something clutches at your heart; your throat burns with the thirst of thousands in Basra and the image of an old woman in black, scooping up water with a battered tin bowl out of a puddle in the desert gnaws at your brain. Even in Zurich, where I spent the whole of last week assisting the Pro Helvetia office in Cairo to explore possibilities for further cultural cooperation between Switzerland and Egypt, the feeling persisted. A tour of the magnificent Theaterhaus Gessnerallee (formerly cavalry stables) ended in a friendly-looking garden with wooden benches and tables and a small refreshment kiosk. My escort was Jean Gradel, the theatre's artistic director, and in the watery sunlight his kind face looked harried and anxious. After a few desultory remarks we lapsed into embarrassed silence. Talking about theatre, we both felt, was somehow frivolous. Peering pensively into his glass of beer, he stammered something about Iraq and for the next half hour we were deep into conversation about the rights and wrongs of the war. Everyone he knew was feeling depressed, he said, not knowing what to do with the persistent feelings of rage and helplessness. The question was how to preserve one's faith in the usefulness and validity of what one was doing in order to carry on doing it. Old palliatives like "the show must go on" sounded hollow and seemed pathetically trite.
Last Saturday, at the Jesuit Cultural Centre in Alexandria where I went to see Eva Bergman's Swedish-Egyptian production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, it was a different story. In the open courtyard outside the Garage Theatre you immediately felt a warm sense of human solidarity, of being among people -- friends and kindred souls who deeply shared your feelings but were determined not to succumb to despair and keen on giving you solace and the courage to continue. Frère Fayez, that passionate lover of Alexandria and indefatigable promoter of peace, art and culture was there to welcome you, place a gentle, comforting hand on your shoulder. On a plain sheet, signed by all the workers at the centre and everyone who had anything to do with the project and neatly folded inside the play's programme, you read:
Can We Stop the War?
Yes, we can.
We believe that behind the darkest night
Stands a gleaming and dazzling day.
We believe that within each human being
Lies a wonderful soul, despite all his wrongdoing.
We believe that injustice will not last
And right will prevail.
It is in our power to say no to war and evil
And to struggle to prevent them.
Our fight is not one of weapons, violence and slogans,
But one of peacemakers.
We want to give another meaning to force and might
Through loving, forgiving, opening oneself to others
OUR WEAPONS ARE ART, BEAUTY AND HONESTY.
This is why, today
The Jesuit Cultural Centre and all those belonging to it
Plus all the Arab and Swedish artists participating in this
Masterwork of Shakespeare
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Want to proclaim our radical opposition to war and hate
And our will to work for love and peace,
This peace which stems from Man's depths
And finds its source in God himself.
As we present this play tonight, we deeply share
The sorrows and suffering of a defenseless people craving for peace
Hoping that our efforts to promote sincerity in art and culture
Will be able some day to eradicate the roots of evil from people's hearts
May this pave the way to true peace!...
The cynical part of me thought this was highly romantic and pathetically naïve and the feminist in me flinched at the phrase "Man's depths"; but however childish it seemed, this simple declaration of faith was like a fleeting glimpse of long lost innocence and moved me to tears. Inside the theatre, we were asked by brother Fayez to stand up for a minute in silence in memory of the war victims on both sides, and while I was reciting a verse from the Qur'an under my breath, I found myself wondering how I would respond to the farcical antics of Peter Quince and company. I did not think I could laugh.
Except for a table, a chair and two benches, the stage was empty and painted deep blue all over, merging land, sky and sea as well as day and night into one fluid element. No barriers here between dream and reality. At the small table, Sayed Ragab, the author of this new colloquial Arabic version of the Dream, pored over his papers in the character of Quince -- mock-author and director of the projected "tedious brief scene of young Pyramus/ And his love Thisbe". This self parody was a lovely touch which was maintained throughout, at once highlighting the rugged beauty, earthy humour and robust lyricism of this new translation as well as Ragab's exceptional comic talent as actor. The farcical rehearsals scenes, superbly performed by Khaled El-Sawy, as Bottom, the weaver, Ramadan Khater, as Flute, the bellows mender, Saleh El-Sayed, as Snout, the tinker, and Salah El-Sayeh as Snug, the joiner gained a further comic edge from Ragab's hilarious mimed reactions to the proceedings and his desperate efforts to contain the bubbling energy and enthusiasm of the irrepressible Bottom.
In contrast, the adventures of the quartet of lovers (Aya Soliman as Hermia and Sara Zaghlul as Helena, with Ahmed El-Sayed and Waleed Marzouk as Lysander and Demetrius) and of the Lebanese Bernadette Houdeib and the Moroccan Driss Roukhe (who doubled as the Hippolyta/ Theseus and Titania/Oberon duets) steered clear of farce and caricature and were all played in a sombre comic vein which, with the help of their ordinary, contemporary clothing, brought the characters nearer everyday reality and foregrounded their painful bewilderment and sense of confusion as they were sucked into the dream. In the case of Bernadette, Aya and Driss, the transition from rational, urban reality to the nocturnal regions of the unconscious was managed with admirable smoothness and their performances were uniformly finely shaded and accurately rendered, with sensitive vocal delivery and intelligent manipulation of body language. As in the best productions of the Night I have seen, Swedish director Eva Bergman and her Swedish-Egyptian artistic and technical crew (assistant director Ahmed El-Attar, choreographer Tomas Fredriksson, music director Bo Stenhom, set and costume designer Tofte Per Lamberg, light designer Charlie Astrom, sound designer Charlie Schaloske and make-up artist Elisa Efergan, as well as Nefisa Sayed Zaki and Ahmed Qutb) managed to bring to the surface the murky depths and disturbing nuances and associations of this deceptively skittish and lighthearted text.
Instrumental in this respect were the performances of Hassan Kreidli as both Puck and Philostrate, the master of revels at Theseus's court, and Roba El-Shamy as both Hippolyta's attendant and Moth -- the only fairy who survived the Bergman-Ragab present version of the play. In leather, baggy trousers, with tousled hair and a bare chest, except for a short, sleeveless, open vest, Kreidli came across as a crazed, deranged, impish teenager, alternately violent, dangerous and obscene. His mime scenes with Roba -- Bergman's creation of course -- were daringly erotic, with vivid suggestions of malice, threat, sly evasions and secret collusion in mischief, while his habit of arrogantly jerking forward the lower half of his body whenever he spoke to any one was calculatedly vulgar and obscene. He was obviously a creature of the nether world, a spirit of sexual and moral anarchy. On more than one occasion, we caught him on the verge of raping or savaging one of the sleepers, be it Hermia, Titania, or even Lysander, and was only stopped by the timely appearance of Oberon or another character.
The boundless, anarchic sexual energy which characterised the fairy world gained force from the austere simplicity and emptiness of the deep blue surroundings and its intensity was coloured, modulated and, where necessary, tempered down by the powerful and vividly evocative musical score which blended mood pieces with Western pop and Egyptian folk tunes. Indeed, in this production the music, played live on stage, with the six musicians who jointly created it in full view, was of primary importance -- a veritable structural element.
Each of the six musicians -- Ahmed Omran (oud and flute), Tarek Yamani (keyboard), Mahmoud Refaat (drums), Bo Stenholm (bass), Mohamed Gamal, known as Mizo (percussion) and Nour Ashour (saxophone) -- as the programme tells us, "contributed his special experience and talent" and, together, "they worked in cooperation with the actors, the choreographer and the director to fine-tune the music and integrate it into the whole performance."
A Midsummer Night's Dream in colloquial Arabic is not a novelty in Egypt and has been done at least four times before. What makes the language in this production so special, apart from its authentic Egyptian imagery and rhythms, is the fact that it incorporated the vocal modulations and characteristics of the Lebanese, Moroccan, Palestinian and Jordanian Arabic dialects. The vocal score of the performance became enriched by this fusion and ordinary words gained in freshness, sounding at once familiar and delightfully strange. Like the music and the highly successful programme of workshops, either related to or built into the work of the production, which, over more than three months, has provided valuable training ground for the Arab cast and technical crew, as well as other young artists, this vocal blending has cultural implications and highlights the aim of this Swedish/Arab production. As producers Kristina Nelson and Brita Papini say: "The issue of translation is at the heart of any cultural exchange and in this project the translator (Sayed Ragab), the director (Eva Bergman), the dramaturg (Lena Fridell), language assistants and, finally, actors have participated in a linguistic process which is both cultural and creative, all gaining insight into the issues of translating culture". Like Alexandria, Bergman's fascinating Dream is multicultural in character, a forum for cross cultural contact, inspired by "the Jesuit's long-standing and worldwide policy of promoting a culture of peace among the different peoples and cultures of the world". As such, it is a statement of faith and a plea for peace -- both sorely needed at this moment in history.
