Reviews 2011
Reviews 2011
✭✭✭✭✭ / ✭✭✭✭✩
dramatized and directed by Tim Supple
Dash Arts/Luminato, Joey and Toby Tanenbaum Opera Centre, Toronto
June 11-19, 2011
Dash Arts’ One Thousand and One Nights, now having its world premiere at Luminato, is a triumph for all concerned. The famous Arabian collection of tales, adapted by Lebanese novelist Hanan al-Shaykh and dramatized by Tim Supple is performed by an energetic, amazingly talented cast in Arabic, French and English (with English surtitles on several screens) and is directed by Supple with dazzling theatricality. The work is presented in two three-hour parts that Luminato claims can be enjoyed on their own. Those without six hours to spare should opt for Part 1 since it provides the background for the framing story of the collection plus the majority of a specific story not completed until Part 2. It also provides a more potent demonstration of the complex embedded story technique so characteristic of the collection. Nevertheless, having seen Part 1, you may very well want to find out how exactly both the framing story ends and the specific story left dangling at the conclusion of Part 1.
One Thousand and One Nights is a collection of stories from the Middle East, India Southeast Asia and China that developed from the 9th to the 14th century ad when the first Arabic manuscript appeared. What makes this collection so unusual is its framing story. The Persian king Sharayar is so disgusted to discover his wife in the midst of an orgy with the palace servants her has her and the participants killed and vows never to be betrayed again. To this end he established a plan to sleep with a virgin every night only to have her beheaded in the morning. The King’s misogynist tyranny becomes a plague affecting every family in the kingdom who must yield up their daughters to slaughter. To stop the brutal killing and to change the King’s views of women, the Shahrazad (i.e. “Scheherazade”), daughter of the King’s vizier, asks to become the King’s next one-night bride. Her plan, devised with her sister Dunyazad, is to so begin a story every night but not finish it, saying that she will need another night to do so. By this means Shahrazad not only prolongs her life and provides a stay of execution to the virgins of the kingdom, but displays the power the storytelling itself. Part 1 of Supple’s play especially focusses on this aspect while Part 2 deals primarily with the question of whether men or women are more trustworthy.
In Part 1 Supple and al-Shaykh stay closely to the the tales that are common to all the many versions of the collection. Thus, Shahrazad’s first story is of “The Fisherman and the Jinni” which then is linked to the story of the Fisherman’s brother in the the story of “The Porter and the Three Ladies”. This story, which does not reach its conclusion until Part 2, provides the frame for a second sequence of stories, one which, the “The Tailor and the Hunchback”, provides the frame for a third sequence. It is much to the credit of Supple and al-Shaykh as adapters and to the clarity of Supple as director that we experience these stories-within-stories-within-stories never as confusing but as thrillingly mind-tickling.
By showing is how the Sharhazad frame is set up and by bringing us to the conclusion of the “Hunchback Cycle” and back to the level of “The Porter and the Three Ladies”, Part 1 demonstrates power of stories, both comic and tragic, to take us out of ourselves and long for more. The Nights’ signature nesting technique demonstrates that not only does every stories contain other stories but every person is a walking compendium of narratives. Supple conveys the notion that life, like Shahrazad’s tales is a story that long to know the end of but never fully will.
The plays are performed on a raised rectangle thrust stage with the audience on three sides, very much like the renovated auditorium in Stratford-upon-Avon. Like Michael Boyd in his direction on a similar stage of Shakespeare’s eight History Plays in 2008, Supple uses only minimal props and the only “set” is Oum Keltoum Belkassi’s proscenium-sized, intricately carved double-wing wooden door at the very back of the stage, containing, like the stories themselves, several other doors within it. The emphasis is thus solely on the actors and their acting, not on tricks or stage effects. After the overproduction so prevalent on the Festival stage at our Stratford, it is immensely refreshing to see a director who trusts the actor, not stage mechanics, to engage us.
And engage us they do. Though the troupe hail from numerous countries and who boast different combinations of verbal and physical acting ability, they work together like an ensemble who has know each other for years. There is no weak link in the 19-member cast, all of whom play multiple roles and each of whom is allowed a time to shine. Houda Echouafni is excellent as Shahrazad, showing both the bravery of the young woman plus the fear underneath that her plan could fall apart. As one of the Three Ladies, her story of betrayal and burial alive is truly frightening. Assaad Bouab well coveys the narrow-mindedness of Sharayar, but also shows how gradually he gives in to Shahrazad’s strategy even though he understands it as such. He is also well-cast as Haroun Al-Rashid, the historic Caliph of Baghdad made legendary by the Nights, who, like the Vincentio in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, wants to force a conventional view of a happy ending on the Three Ladies that ignores their insistence on independence.
Ramzi Choukhair is clearly the prime comedian of the troupe and is hilarious as the Porter, who stumbles into the mystery of the Three Ladies and later as the humorously volatile King of China. The other two of the Three Ladies, Nanda Mohammed and Hajar Graigaa, portray complex characters--the first imperious in public but suffering inside from a love forever lost, the second seemingly fragile but commanding an inner strength that carried her through past ordeals.
In separate stories Adila Bendimerad plays a woman who dies of unrequited love and Saad Al Ghefari, a man so driven by jealousy he kills and dismembers his wife, only to be overcome by unbearable remorse when confronted with her innocence. The two actors are later united as the titles characters of the story of “Budur and Qamar al Zaman”, a Chinese princess and a Persian prince, made to fall in love as a result of a wager between two jinn, only to fall into madness because of it.
On a comic note Mohammed Breaka Ali is wonderful as the naive Donkey Owner, who believes his donkey is really a man bewitched, and Amal Omran has a field day in the role of Dalilah the Wily, a story meant to challenge men’s views of women. Shahrazad’s storytelling gets off to a fine start with two older members of the cast--Falah Ibrahim as a lucky Fisherman and the bulky, deep-voiced Abdelhalim Zreiby as the threatening jinni freed from his bottle.
Zolaykha Sherzad’s costumes range from beautifully embroidered colourful fabrics from the nobles to rough tunics in earthy colours for lower-class characters. She can make a man a jinni just with two feathered armbands and make another man the ruler of the jinn with a simple cloak webbed between the sides of the body and the arms. As the piece progresses, Sherzad begins to introduce more modern clothing, like sunglasses or a Louis Vuitton bag, to underline the timelessness of the stories. Sabri El Atrous creates a wide range of lighting effects, including allowing the stage to go completely dark at key moments. He also use lamps close to the stage to make various actors cast enormous shadows on the back wall. The whole work is accompanied by live music from a band of five on Middle Eastern instruments. The effect, especially in the use of drums to reflect growing tension or blows given on stage is very much like the accompanying music in kabuki, though clearly with a Middle Eastern flavour.
Both parts of One Thousand and One Nights brings its stories so alive that you have no doubt why this collection has remained famous and influential for centuries for its invention and variety. Staging it has the additional benefit of letting us see a wide range of Arabic speaking actors of all colours, shapes and sizes that completely destroys foolish Western stereotypes of Middle Eastern people. In its celebration of storytelling as one of mankind’s oldest artistic impulses, the show becomes a celebration of the common humanity that unites people across time and space and across boundaries of language and religion.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photos: (header) Houda Echouafni and Saad Al Ghefari; (middle) Ammar Haj Ahmad, Asaad Bouab, Ramzi Choukair, Tewfik Jallab (standing) and Saad Al Ghefari. ©2011 Cylla von Tiedemann.
For Tickets, visit www.luminato.com.
2011-06-12
One Thousand and One Nights, Part 1 /
One Thousand and One Nights, Part 2