At nearly 93 Amina Rizq retains the power to mesmerise an audience, writes Nehad Selaiha Three years ago director Esam El-Sayed pulled off a feat that many had attempted without success. He managed to lure Amina Rizq back to the stage after an estrangement that had lasted almost 25 years. The bait was Abdallah El-Toukhi's one-act play The Black Rabbit -- a harrowing psychological drama, in the mode of symbolic realism, about a destructive love- hate relationship between an aged, crippled, bloodsucking mother and her kind, gullible, weak-willed daughter. Though written in the 1960s it had never been produced before, perhaps on account of its nasty image of the mother as a malicious autocrat and spiteful bully. It was the first time an Egyptian playwright had dared contradict or suggest on stage an alternative to the traditionally idealised and hallowed mother-figure, prick the bubble of selfless, unconditional filial duty and incite the audience to rebel against any form of pernicious parental authority. The play was deemed too shocking and somehow out of tune with the predominantly political theatre of that period. Political tyrants rather than tyrannical parents were the most immediate threat theatre needed to confront, so it was believed; private life, personal and family relationships could wait till after the dawn of freedom. They have been waiting since. When asked sometime before The Black Rabbit why she deserted the stage though she continued to act in cinema and television, Ms Rizq explained that though she pined for it, she didn't like what she was offered. There were few decent plays around, she remarked, and still fewer decent parts for old actresses. When offered the role of the viciously mean and selfish mother, she accepted it at once, even though it was subsidiary to that of the daughter (played by Sanaa Yunis) and considerably smaller. Before rehearsals started, she fell off the pavement while doing her shopping in Zamalek, where she lives, and suffered a serious leg injury. It would take a long time to heal, she was told, and has unfortunately impaired her walking since. Rest was advised, which seemed to put paid to all hopes of a comeback. But contrary to all expectations she stubbornly went along with the project, punctually attending rehearsals, as her mentor, Youssef Wahbi, a rigid disciplinarian, had taught her in her youth, in the golden days of the Ramses Company, back in the 1920s, and performing her part sitting down in one position throughout. And rather than impair her acting, her forced immobility made it all the more powerful and hypnotic, concentrating all her energy in her eyes and voice. In her hands the stereotype of the selfish, domineering mother subtly grew into a sinister, menacing presence, like that of the wicked witches of myth and folk tales, inspiring irrational fear despite her frail, ordinary appearance and mundane surroundings. The audience held their breath in awe as they watched her and even when she was silent and seemed to doze off in her seat their eyes obsessively gravitated towards her in mounting suspense and resentful fascination. In the hushed small hall of Al-Tali'a Theatre one could feel the floodgates of secret memories, forbidden thoughts, unacknowledged grievances and guilty feelings opening involuntarily and giving their owners welcome catharsis. Ugly and deeply unsettling as the revelations were, for most of the audience, particularly the female members, who are always the ones landed with sick, senile, fretful parents and relatives and asked to cheerfully give up their own lives and dreams in the name of filial duty, they felt painfully honest and you could overhear many of them saying as much at the end of the show. Now, three years after Black Rabbit, Ms Rizq is physically much weaker and can hardly walk without support. Her talent and spirit, however, are unquenchable. I had thought then I had seen her last stage appearance ever, that the part of the termagant mother was her theatrical swan song; to my joy and delight she has proven me wrong. When I reviewed Black Rabbit on this page, I chose for a title "Age cannot wither her", and O, my prophetic soul, it has not. She is back on stage, with the same director, in a play by the same author, but this time at Al-Hanager rather than Al- Tali'a. And though Abdallah El-Toukhi is no longer with us (he died last year), his daughter, Safaa, is there, side by side with Ms Rizq, presenting with her a new political reading of the frame-story of The Arabian Nights (or The One Thousand and One Nights) and the fates of the legendary Sheherazade and Shahrayar. Time-wise, El-Toukhi's play, written during his last illness, begins where The Nights end; hence the title, The One Thousand and Two Nights. It opens on the morning after Sheherazade has won her bet with Shahrayar: they had wagered that if she could persuade him to keep her alive for one thousand and one nights, he would set her free. Foolishly, she never doubts he will keep his promise; but just as she prepares to leave the palace, changing her traditional Harem costume for jeans and sneakers, as befits a modern Sheherazade, Shahrayar storms in, announcing he could never let her go. He professes love and need for her while secretly resenting the idea of her freedom and sense of independence. When she insists on leaving a battle of wills ensues and sensing that she would rather die than give in, he resorts to trickery. With the help of his villainous prime minister he initiates a war with a neighbouring country and pleads with her to mind the kingdom while he goes to battle. She soon discovers that she is no more than a titular ruler and that the corrupt prime minister is the one really in charge. When the returning soldiers begin to spread the truth about the reason for the war they are herded into lunatic asylums and when Sheherazade has a showdown with Shahrayar he throws her into a dungeon. One fine morning, Shahrayar discovers that he is a king without subjects. The whole population of the kingdom has gone underground to join Sheherazade and prepare for a revolution to overthrow the monarchy. The prime minister, who covets the throne, is quick to send his spies and agents to infiltrate their ranks and cause sedition. His plan succeeds and a fierce power struggle erupts in which both the true and fake revolutionaries prove as despotic and greedy as Shahrayar. Finding herself a prisoner for the second time and, worse still, a pawn in a game of political power, with each of the rival parties claiming her as leader and committing atrocities in her name, the desperate, disillusioned Sheherazade seeks the help of Omm El-Kheir (literally, mother of goodness), an ancient wise woman who shows her the way out through a secret tunnel. In the final sequence, the prime minister's plans fall through and his camp is defeated, the officers who took part in the disastrous war and were straitjacketed when they told the truth assume power, Shahrayar is deposed and allowed to go free because, like the Egyptian 1952 military coup d'état, "this is a white revolution" (as the new ruler robustly declares) and Sheherazade is left despondently wondering with Omm El-Kheir about the future of this purportedly democratic new regime. As you can see from this somewhat lengthy summary of the action (if one can call it that, since most of it is reported rather than seen), the play is a transparent parable of recent Egyptian political history which palpably reflects the author's divided feelings about the political upheaval of 1952, his initial hopeful optimism, growing scepticism and eventual disillusionment. In terms of conception and technique, it fails to measure up to the human depth and complexity or taut structure of his best work, such as Black Rabbit. As Sheherazade, Safaa El-Toukhi had plenty of scope to display her well-trained voice, emotional range and graceful figure. As Shahrayar Sami El-'Adl had a reasonably well-delineated, credible character to deal with and he delivered it with confidence, skill, and lots of panache, making the most of his deep, broad voice. The third major character, the prime minister, was a common stereotype but clearly and economically outlined and Khalil Mursi played it simply, vividly, with a sure touch. The supporting characters were either merely functional, with no distinctive features, as in the case of Sheherazade's lady-in- waiting (Ayah Soliman), her lover, and the many soldiers and citizens, or grotesquely and rather ridiculously exaggerated, like the executioner. The actors who took them on could do little with them however much they tried and they had the added burden of having to move around those bulky, unsightly wooden structures which crowded the stage, obstructed the audience's view of the actors and served no apparent dramatic or aesthetic purpose. More disconcerting still were the heavy-footed dancers who kept barging in, leaping, writhing and flailing their arms vapidly and boring us to tears with their sluggish, clumsily-choreographed mimetic dancing. But what about the magnificent Ms Rizq? Where does she figure in all this? Nowhere indeed, as far as the plot or stage action is concerned; but everywhere in fact, in terms of the total theatrical experience and its impact on the audience. Like the old Sheherazade she is a story- teller who lays the scene, introduces the characters, explains their thoughts and motives, bridges the gaps between the scenes, comments on the course of events and draws the final moral. Only once does she step into the story to rescue the captive Sheherazade and show her the escape route. For the rest of the performance she is ensconced in a chair, inside an enormous, emptied- out, revolving tree trunk, on one side of the stage, which turns to reveal her when she speaks and then to hide her when she has finished. Regardless of what she is given to say, which is mostly in monologue form, or what you ultimately think of the story she tells, you find yourself falling under her spell, thrilling to every modulation of her husky, spirited voice, every flicker of her eyes, every movement of her lips, every gesture of her hands. She seems so natural, so refreshingly spontaneous, and yet behind it all is a massive arsenal of techniques developed over 78 years of intensive stage experience. It is Ms Rizq above all -- her titanic talent, exuberant theatrical sense, infectious excitement, enormous stamina, charisma, and vintage charm which make The One Thousand and Two Nights such a memorable experience whatever the faults of the text or direction. And for bringing her back to the stage, Esam El-Sayed and his sponsor, Hoda Wasfi, the artistic manager of Al-Hanager, have earned a place in the hearts of all Ms Rizq's fans, as well as the eternal gratitude of theatre lovers and all the audiences who flock nightly to Al-Hanager to bask in her inimitable, heart-warming, incandescent presence.
