THEATER REVIEW

BY

BINA SHARIF

RICHARD III: AN ARAB TRAGEDY

AT

BAM

PART OF MUSLIM VOICES

       ARTS & IDEAS

Adapted and directed by

Sulayman Al-Bassam

This Richard III: played with gusto and confidence by, (Fayez Kazak who also plays duke of Gloucester) has no deformity at all.  Instead he has an extra ability of being a first rate comedian.  Audience members, especially Arabic speaking laugh loud and often at this 21st Century adaptation of Richard III with cell phones, Tv monitors, text messages, Instant 

coverage of all the carnage which Richard bestow upon his relatives and people.

If any one dared to make Richard III: a historical tragedy into a funny farce about the functioning and mostly non functioning of the leaderships of the Middle East, Its Sulayman Al- Bassam, the director and the leader of Sabab, an International touring theater.

His approach in adapting the tragedy of Richard III: into an Arab tragedy is appropriate knowing what's been going on in the Persian Gulf.  Sulayman Al-Bassam seems amused by

projecting the basic flaws of the kingdoms and cultures, corruption, deceit, greed and the hunger for power at the expense of many lives.

Richard III: When at the end  desperately seeking a horse which he would gladly exchange for his kingdom, we all know that all that power and greed was not worth it....And we feel  bad for the fallen king to say the least but in this production one tends to laugh and enjoy more not because the end is not tragic but it had been handled throughout in such a funny manner that

one is almost amused at the folly of most of the Arab leaders who acts first and think later or hardly think at all about their cruelty.

This production's most beautiful effect is that its spoken in Melodious Arabic language.

Just to hear the sound of Azan, (The Arabic and Muslim call to prayers in the major American theater) is mesmerizing.  And the live band creating the melody of lament is sadly thrilling.

Fayez Kazak who plays both parts, Duke of Gloucester and king Richard III:  has enormous

energy and sense of fun and he moves fast and furious and often smiles as If he is Immensely enjoying his ultimate tragedy, but actually calling this play, An Arab Tragedy, he is smiling at the failed Arab leaders and their destructive  ever lasting Un-democratic rules.

Since the actor is having fun, we  the audience are more than willing to join him.

The play doesn't have the opening  famous monologue  delivered by Richard, Its actually 

Queen Margaret (Amal Omram) who  having been abandoned from power has the fury of  madness, curses and spit fire in the opening prologue and that's a very effective Image and a real unexpected change.  She often appears with the same power of fury and revenge throughout the evening.  Amal Omram is wonderful in that role.

As I mentioned earlier that this production has all the elements of modern technology and the character Buckingham played by Raymond el-Hosni is the Chief of staff of Image maker of Richard.  Some of the current events  projected by video simulcasts and events narrated by reporters who make funny faces and grin constantly as if they were all in a circus...

This kind of innovation in  Shakespear's tragedy can be annoying but here the effect is hilarious.

The Music here is a big part of this beautiful production.  The Ominous echo of the music

is everlasting and is the witness of the passage of turmoils in the Arab lands.

The stage is empty except some colorful cushions which the actors themselves bring on stage and sit on them and remove while leaving....This minimal staging gives the feeling of the vastness of desserts of empty hope and corrupt power.

Verses from the Qoran are recited many times and it has a blissful, soothing, exotic and alien effect on the psyche.

But underneath all the fun and the humor and the jokes, there is an Ominous tragedy lurking around which is not only of a Person such as Richard III:  but of the World.  We are constantly aware that something is not right with the World and its leaders and its Inhabitants and its religions and its false fundamentalist's rigid and narrow out look and destructive tendencies

which has kept the planet on a dangerous edge....

There is a constant message of peace in this production as the Qoutes from Qoran are being recited and numerous times the Islamic greeting,  ASSALAAM-O-ALYIKUM and WA-LYEIKUM SALAAM, meaning, "Peace be upon you." "And peace be upon you too,"  is uttered

but then the killing rampage also goes on after the message of peace....

Its Ironic if people and the leaders of this production only heard themselves clearly while uttering  the word, "Allah."  which actually was heard at least a 100 times during the show, they might stop the slaughter. But the message of peace...

was beautiful, soothing, comforting and at the same time disturbing because the events unfolding in the play were disturbing and eventually  deadly.

Beside the tragic events which had to be dealt with, after all the title of the play is Richard III:

An Arab Tragedy, the production was a lot of Un-expected fun and the sound of the spoken Arabic was just amazing, haunting and poetic.

Mr. Bassam and his whole ensemble including the musicians have done a brilliant job.

binasharif@earthlink.net

THEATER REVIEW

BY

BINA SHARIF

The Pearl Theater Company presents

              Tennessee Williams'

               VIEUX CARRÉ

Directed by Austin Pendleton

When Tennessee Williams decided to move away from his mother and his sister to escape his vague anxiety and his pain which was already accumulating in him as a young writer of poems and short stories, he ended up in a dilapidated New Orleans boarding house at 722 Toulouse Street in the French Quarter. The tenants of that shadowy boarding house became the lost, mournful, lonely and aspiring characters of his future plays.  The memory of those Isolated and sad human beings never left Tennessee alone...

Those people appeared in one form or the other in many of his plays and stories but finally in the play VIEUX CARRÉ  he decided that we the audience should meet them fully as he met them when he was 28 years old.

In VIEUX CARRÉ  Tennessee Williams' takes us to the dimly lit, dingy rooms of 

his youth's memory, the vulnerability of love and the pain of its broken threads,

the promise of a future and the fear of the lack of any ray of light to shine on it,

the impending terrors and loneliness of aging and death and the sexual Identity

and the ache of nostalgic sorrow for life's waste.

The boarding house at 722 Toulouse Street, in the Vieux Carré district of New Orleans is run by Mrs. Wire, (Carol Schultz) has tennants in it who are fighting a loosing battle of desire in the name of escape from this no man's land of loss

and hope,  resignation instead of despair over their demise of un-fullfilled promise or a glimmer of light which makes them travel back and forth to their own empty lives and dreams.

The boarding house has a young man, the writer, (Sean Mcnall) who narrates the stories of the rest of the dwellers of darkness and many times become part of the story which he is typing on his old type writer with a candle which many times he can't light because there are no matches to be found and the burnt out bulbs have never been replaced by the land lady.  So their lives are literally reflected from inside out in the dark shadows which cast a spell on the memories of the characters and the audience.

Vieux Carré  is a memory play.  Its about the youth and the old age of the artist

who is lonely and disillusioned and is fighting to Identify himself sexually.

There are runaways and old ladies who some times don't even remember who they are but recite beautiful poetry about their vanished glorious and refined past while they have nothing much to loose because they have lost it all.

There is a young troubled woman named Jane, (Rachel Botchan) who is a nice,

lovely young lady on the run and haunted by demons and is in love with a strip show hustler and a drug addict named Tye, ( Joseph Collins)  whom she wants to get rid of but keep wanting him to stay even after he subject her to emotional and sexual violence.

And than there is an old man, an ailing painter named, Nightingale, (George Morfogen) who draws portraits in a bar called two parrots bar and is dying of loneliness and begs the young writer for company and affection and sex.

To him the sexual encounter with any stranger is the answer to his eternal loneliness.  And then there is a maid named, nursie (Claudia Robinson) who is often needed for help by the land lady mostly to untangle the denziens of  their

emotional turmoil which is constant.

Tennessee Williams startted to write Vieux Carré  in 1939 and must have gone back to it for decades because it wasn't produced till 1977 on Broadway and after horrendously bad reviews closed within one week.

But almost every character in His later plays reflects the people of 722 Toulouse street,  forgotten people. lonely people, nostalgic people, vulnerable people, misunderstood people, people who have tons of poetry in them but no one to recite it to but to their own memory and to their own  Unforgettable  pastwhich

keeps coming back to haunt them

Vieux Carré  is Tennessee Williams most autobiographical play like Glass Menagerie. Its a sad and poetic story of lost souls who are seeking redemption and escape through Imagined promises of hope  and constant despair into one night stands and drugs and encounters with the wrong and rough loosers in the name of loneliness and emptiness of the soul.

The play is wonderfully directed by Austin Pendleton who captures beautifully the sadness, loss, dreams and poetry of these characters wounded hearts.

The play is hauntingly lit by Stephen Petrilli who creates shadows upon shadows

of hopes dimmed.

The whole cast is wonderful and captures the heart and the essence of Tennessee's mood and poetry but, George Morfogen breaks your heart with the ache of Immense loneliness.

Other brilliant performance is by Joseph Collins as Tye who destroys Jane with his sexual Intensity and passion of a man and a true hustler with a soul to sell.

Carol Schultz gives a fully accomplished performance as the land lady,  strong as a whip and loosing her mind at the same time.

Vieux Carré  is another superb performance by the great Pearl Theater Company and there is nothing more beautiful than Tennessee Williams poetry.  Give yourself a chance to hear it.

binasharif@earthlink.net