Obituary:
Amina Rizq (1910-2003)Age could never wither her
In the early afternoon of 25 February this year a taxi drove into the courtyard of Al-Tali'a theatre and pulled up in front of the wide glass doors leading to the main hall. The artistic director of the theatre, Intisar Abdel-Fattah, who had been waiting on the steps outside, rushed to it, diligently manipulating a video-camera, with a crowd of stage- hands close on his tail, one of them holding a huge bouquet of flowers. Inside the cab a frail, old woman in black, with a deeply wrinkled face and hands looked out on the scene with hazy eyes in some amazement. The black scarf wound turban-like around her head accentuated her pallor while at the same time setting off strong, compelling features and purposeful air. She was obviously in pain; she had fractured a knee in 1999 and had been having trouble with it since. Nevertheless, she beamed at everybody as they helped her out of the car, pushed the flowers in her direction and jostled with each other to kiss her hands. Supporting herself with a stick and leaning heavily on the arm of a hefty stage-hand she limped up the steps and disappeared behind the glass doors. Inside, veteran director Saad Ardash with actor Fouad Selim were waiting for her. It was the first day of rehearsals for a revival of Ardash's 1964 Pocket Theatre production of Tawfiq El-Hakim's experimental venture into the absurd, O, Tree-Climber!
O, Tree Climber! opened on 23 April, after two months of intensive rehearsals, during which Rizq bravely battled against age and failing health. It was as if she knew it would be her swan song and poured the remainder of her fast ebbing energy into it. Sadly she could only manage 16 performances, spaced out over 25 days, before her health gave way. Sadly too, on many of the 16 nights the auditorium was barely half full. The timing was bad, the tail-end of the season when families are gearing up for the beginning of exams. Did she feel that her beloved audience had turned its back on her, that the times had left her behind? Mahmoud El-Hedeini speaks of the loneliness of her last years and how she left her flat in Zamalek, which overlooked the Nile, and moved to a small hotel to escape it. Was it also to escape it that she always turned up at Al-Tali'a two hours before the performance to chat with the people there and inspect the stage before going to her room "to prepare", as she would say, and, perhaps, to pray for a decent house as someone once overheard her do aloud? Would the applause of large audiences have given her an extra ounce of strength to go on a little bit further or, at least, some solace and a final reassurance that theatre -- the partner to which she had pledged her life -- had not deserted her or let her down? May be. All I am sure of is that a grand dame like Rizq deserved a far grander exit than the one she got at Al-Tali'a.
On that afternoon in February, however, Rizq was there in the flesh, eager to start work, and so was Ardash.
"A historical moment to be recorded, the meeting of giants," Intisar shouted happily to everybody as he followed Rizq inside, plying his camera. I was tickled by the incongruity of the comparison: "giants" seemed hardly an accurate way to describe a man of nearly 80 and an ailing woman over 90, but Intisar's childish excitement was genuine and infectious. I remembered how three years ago, on a mild night in November 1999, I experienced a similar thrill when I saw Rizq coming out of Al-Tali'a's other, smaller hall next door; she was in the same homely, black get-up and also limping, but she looked elated and quite regal. It was after a performance of Abdallah El-Toukhi's The Black Rabbit which brought her back to the stage after nearly a quarter of a century. Though her part in it, that of an old, crippled woman who viciously abuses her meek daughter, was thoroughly repulsive and she executed it with faultless mastery and malicious relish, the audience loved her in it. Every night they flocked in hordes to the theatre, crowding the small auditorium of Salah Abdel-Sabour hall and spilling over into the corridor outside. It was a triumphant comeback; the play ran for two seasons, then toured in Kuwait where Rizq was received like a conqueror and showered with honours. (A full review of the production with some reminiscences of Rizq were published on this page on 11 November, 1999.) She was obviously happy with the enormous success of the play and grateful to director Isam El-Sayed and actress Sanaa Younis (who played the daughter) for joining forces to seduce her back to her old love and real passion: the stage.
For years she hadn't been offered any decent stage-parts in the state theatre, or decent wages for that matter. She was also put off by the haphazard work conditions there, the lack of discipline and proper respect for directors and among colleagues, not to mention the general sloppiness and air of indifference which prevailed among technicians. In cinema and television, where the pay is better and the work less physically taxing, she had long been consigned to the niche of the affectionate, long-suffering, self-sacrificing but morally strong and upright mother or granny. Though she never had any children her sincerity and power of conviction in these parts were incomparable. So the orders kept coming in, and however small the part she rarely said no. She knew she could always work something memorable out of the smallest parts; besides, they meant work, something she had done all her life and could never live without. They also kept her decently clothed, fed and sheltered and allowed her to put a little something on the side for a rainy day. She had seen so many famous and once fabulously rich colleagues reduced to beggars and having to live off charity. Fatma Rushdi, who had worked with her at the Ramses Company in the 1920s was a particularly poignant example.
Nevertheless, for an actress of her wide and varied repertoire and broad talent, this stream of repetitive, marginal roles which offered no challenge and engaged only a fraction of her technical arsenal must have palled. She had started her career in drag, impersonating boys, played the damsel in distress in countless melodramas as well as the romantic vedette in many local and foreign texts (including Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and Othello and Ahmed Shawqi's Magnoun Leila). As she matured in years she began to tackle more complex and demanding characters, such as Anna in Rasputin, Cleopatra in Ahmed Shawqi's The Death of Cleopatra, Gertrude in Hamlet, Isis in Tawfiq El-Hakim's play of that name, Sheherazade in both Aziz Abaza's Shahrayar and Ali Ahmed Bakathir's The Secret of Sheherazade, Shagarat Ad-Durr in Aziz Abaza's play on the life and tragic end of this great Egyptian queen and, later, in the early 1960s, the autocratic mother in Garcia Lorca's The House of Bernarda Alba and the flighty Mme. Ranyevskaia in Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard. Her repertoire of roles also included the fallen woman (e.g. Marguerite in The Lady of the Camellias), the seductive home- wrecker and the shrewish, domineering wife, notably in the stage version of Bayoumi Effendi.
In the 1970s, when the state-theatre lay in ruins, she made a few forays into the commercial sector and though she soon became disgusted with its insipidity, cheapness, slovenly practices and view of the actor as commodity, she scored some memorable successes there. In one play in particular, Innaha Haqqan 'A'ela Muhtaramah (It's a Truly Respectable Family), both with Fouad El-Muhandis and Shwikar, she revealed what a wonderful knack she had for comedy, leading some to declare that her talent for comedy was far superior to that of many a seasoned professional comedian. Other comic parts followed, and in all of them she strictly avoided exaggeration and physical gimmicks; however funny the situation or absurd the lines she had to say, she would always deliver them seriously, with a straight face, and suddenly everyone would be in stitches. The secret lay in that barely discernible hint of quizzical irony that laced her intonation and subtly coloured her general demeanour -- a technique she only mastered and refined in the last stage of her career. It was a far cry from the sensational, heavily melodramatic and declamatory style she had learnt in Ramses Company and used in her early plays and movies. Curiously, the master who had drilled her into this way of acting when she first joined his Ramses Company as an apprentice in 1923 had himself displayed, in the later phase of his career, a marked comic bent and a more technically sophisticated approach to acting. Wouldn't it be a horrendous irony if despite their pioneering role and great achievements in the field of serious drama both Rizq and her life-long mentor, Youssef Wahbi, were best remembered in the future for their comic parts?
As Faten Hamama's hilarious mother in Dawoud Abdel-Sayed's memorable film, Ard Al-Ahlam (Dreamland) or the scatty, eccentric old woman in the recent television serial, Opera Aida, opposite Yehya El-Fakharani, Rizq is pure joy to watch, and so is Wahbi as the hen-pecked husband in the film version of Bayoumi Effendi or the incorrigible old philanderer in Isha'it Hobb (Love Rumour).
Some historians have argued that Rizq's fanatical loyalty to Wahbi, which took the form of a monopoly contract, giving him exclusive control of her acting career both in theatre and cinema for many years, was ultimately detrimental. Had she been exposed to other influences and different directors and acting methods, the argument goes, her performance, whether on the stage or the screen, would have gained in terms of subtlety, variety, depth and refinement at an earlier stage and the full scope of her talent would have been better exploited. Rizq invariably rejected this argument, even becoming angry if someone dared mention it in her presence. For her Wahbi was almost a sacrosanct figure and she always spoke of him with a veneration approaching idolatry. Whether she ever loved him as a woman loves a man no one will ever know. Not that she wasn't asked frequently. Every time, however, she would laugh off the idea and repeat the same thing: that she loved him as a father, teacher and benefactor and owed him an infinite debt of gratitude.
She was just a slip of a girl, in her early teens, when she turned up at his office in Ramses Company one evening and asked to become an actress. With her was a young aunt, Amina Mohamed, only a few years her senior and equally stage-struck. For a year the two girls had secretly frequented the small theatres and music halls of Rawd Al-Farag, where Rizq's family had moved from Tanta after the death of her father, and wanted to go on the stage. Despite violent family opposition they ultimately got their way and joined Wahbi' company, thanks to his active, personal intercession and the attractive salary he offered his two new protégés. Provincial, ignorant and very green, Rizq learnt everything from him, not only about acting, but how to dress, walk and talk, and he was always kind, protective and very supportive. How could she not feel indebted to such a man or not stand by him in times of crisis? When the company ran into serious financial trouble in the mid-1930s and had to vacate the theatre for failing to pay the rent many members deserted, joining the newly founded National Egyptian Company. Though by now famous and very much sought after by theatre and film directors Rizq was not one of them. It wasn't until the company was finally dismantled in 1944 that she joined her former colleagues. But even then, whenever Wahbi could put together enough money to stage a few revivals from the company's repertoire for a short season, as he did in 1947, 1957, 1960, 1969 and 1970, he could always count on Rizq promptly dropping everything and turning up. And when the state television decided to record 23 of his plays in the summer of 1960 she was there as his leading lady.
But if she did not love him, why didn't she get married? She was on the verge of doing it twice, she told an interviewer in 1995: once during a spell of extreme depression induced by sheer exhaustion; the other under strong family pressure. In both cases, however, the prospective spouse insisted that she quit acting, stay at home and live as a dependent. She simply couldn't do it. She was "besotted" with acting and could not imagine living away from the stage; besides, she had been her own mistress for far too long and could not tolerate the idea of someone running her life for her or not having any money of her own. It was after breaking the second engagement that she decided to dedicate herself undividedly to her art and "become married to the stage", as she liked to put it.
It was to renew her bond with the stage that she insisted on going through with Black Rabbit against the strict orders of her doctors when halfway through the rehearsals she injured her knee. It was also to renew this bond that, three years later, in the autumn of 2002, she allowed Isam El-Sayed once more the honour of directing her in another play, The One Thousand and Second Night (reviewed on this page on 24 October, 2002), also by Abdallah El-Toukhi, but this time at Al-Hanager centre. On the opening night, after the performance, Huda Wasfi, as head of the centre held an elegant ceremony in Rizq's honour to mark the 78th anniversary of her first appearance on stage, as Dimitrev in Rasputin, in October, 1924. 79 years later, O, Tree Climber! was to prove her last. Between the two, she performed hundreds of parts, on stage and radio, in cinema and television, building a massive, glorious heritage over the years and gathering many laurels.
Amina Rizq, born in Tanta in 1910, died in Cairo on 24 August, 2003.
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 28 August - 3 September 2003 (Issue No. 653)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/653/cu1.htm