A ghost sonata
At the National, Nehad Selaiha sees ghosts At High Noon
After The People on the Third Floor (staged at the National in 2001), Osama Anwar Okasha's At High Noon (currently at the same venue, with Mohamed Omar once more directing and veteran actress Samiha Ayoub in the lead) feels like a studied variation on the previous work or, indeed, the second part of a planned trilogy -- very much in the style of the author's famous television drama serials -- about contemporary Egyptian reality and its historical antecedents. Similar in structure and overall theme, with more or less the same panoply of disillusioned, middle-aged and young but frustrated characters, it offers a composite picture of family relationships at the middle class social strata and unfolds like a grim tale of moral corruption, failed hopes, wasted potential and self-deception. As in the previous play, after a relaxed, realistic beginning, shot through with plenty of non-too-original comedy, which introduces the setting and characters, a sudden, unforeseen event jolts the characters, audience and whole play onto an unexpected, symbolic plane. In The People on the Third Floor it was the arrival of a police inspector -- hugely reminiscent of J B Priestley's real/imaginary inspector Goole in An Inspector Calls -- at the flat of a middle-class family of strained means during the wedding of its eldest son. Here it is the enigmatic, wholesale drowning of five young people at a sea resort which is followed by many more reports of similar incidents all over Alexandria. The investigation of this tragic affair leads to harrowing, melodramatic revelations about the secret lives and relationships of the victims' respective families and about the 1960s generation in general.
As the revelations accumulate, generating a lot of suspense, and the drowning incident itself as a fact becomes a moot point, shrouded in a thick cloud of suspicion, the thin crust of naturalism begins to crack, gradually exposing the author's intent and the true nature of the play as a social-political parable. First, as reports of more young people drowning everywhere keep coming in, we are treated to mysterious mobile calls from the absentees which could be factual or easily the result of wishful thinking on the part of their distraught families. You would imagine that the sight of the supposedly drowned young five suddenly materialising as if out of the blue, in bathing suits, singing and joking, with towels gaily flung over their shoulders, would put an end to the mystery. But no such hope: just as the parents heave a sigh of relief and prepare to resume their former lives, the police inspector, who has throughout denied the truth of the drowning reports and suspected a conspiracy to ruin his career, walks in declaring that the bodies of the drowned young people have been thrown up on the shore. Who then are the people who came back? Did they really come back, or is it another collective illusion?
Up until the final curtain the riddle remains unsolved. But this is only on the realistic level. On the parabolic, no member of the audience is left in doubt as to the meaning of what they have seen. In the dialogue, over and over to a reprehensible extent, the play has made its point. Egypt, symbolised by the network of summer chalets owned and run by Haggah Zeinat (Samiha Ayoub), a former prostitute and owner of many brothels turned pious business woman, has become, like the beautiful house in Strindberg's The Ghost Sonata, a place grown "old, mouldy and rotten ...where people torment each other and go crazy". Like the proverbial cat who eats her young thinking it is for their own good, or the rapacious cook in Strindberg's masterpiece, that "bloated monster" who sucks up the life of everything she touches, Haggah Zeinat herself, though a victim of society and as much sinned against as sinning, seems to destroy the lives of everyone around her. Actresses Eva, Magda El-Khatib and Salwa Khattab -- all television stars -- offer variations on the same character and, in every case, the victims are the sons and daughters. Dalia Mustafa, the spokeswoman of the younger generation, ruthlessly condemns all and, like Strindberg's "Young Woman" who lives in the shadow of "The Mummy" in the closet, has lost all desire to live and is withering away "because of the air in this house which reeks of crime, deception and lies of every kind". With the exception of the caretaker, his wife and the bigamous, philandering Kharboush (farcically rendered by Youssef Dawoud), all the characters tell us in turn, at different points, what we have already discovered for ourselves -- that they are lifeless ghosts with thick masks to camouflage the void behind them and empty husks incapable of love or real communication.
"If you keep silent too long, things begin to rot. Stagnant, stinking pools begin to form," says "The Student" in Strindberg's Sonata. This is what happens in Okasha's bleak new play. The world it depicts is glitzy on the outside, rotten underneath. No "action" is possible here and we do not get any. Except for the doubtful drowning incident, nothing happens and nothing is capable of happening. Whatever lives the characters once had ended long before the curtains open and the only dramatic action possible must take the form of revelation through dialogue or confessional monologues. In this respect At High Noon, not unlike many other modern plays, reflects its overriding themes of loss, impotence, lack of drive and isolation in its structure, using the mystery formula to maintain the interest of the audience and propel the series of discoveries.
In this kind of play, especially if it runs into three hours, verbosity is always a concomitant danger and At High Noon, despite Okasha's craftsmanship, could have done with a bit of cutting and condensing. This might have softened its irritating, preachy tone and curbed its heavy- handed didactic tendency. Above all, what one misses here is subtlety and fineness of touch; and, as if to make matters worse, the director bracketed the show with rousing lyrics (by Bahaa Jahin) which spelt out Okasha's message in no uncertain terms and sought, with the help of Attiya Mahmoud's music and choral singing to bludgeon the audience into accepting it even before the play started. Ideally, At High Noon should have taken the form of a chamber play on the model of Strindberg's Sonata, which it closely resembles at the core. Okasha, however, seems to have had the National in mind and an audience who would come expecting a full-length play and the kind of stuff he churns out for television with all the attendant thrills. Whatever the reason, At High Noon seemed to me like a play split down the middle -- a potential Ghost Sonata trapped in the 1960's tradition of social comedy, weighted down by the clichés of realism and fettered by the formula for commercial success, with its ostentatious, calculated effects, bravura roles and speeches, solo numbers for stars and cues for applause. This explains the uneven style of the acting and its sudden, startling shifts from broad comedy to naturalism to declamatory melodrama. It also explains the non-too-successful combination of realism and expressionism in Ayman Nur's sets. Okasha's popularity, however, together with the star-studded cast seemed to sweep aside the faults of the text and direction. The audience looked happy and clapped uproariously the night I was there and from the critics the play has had nothing short of rave reviews since it opened.
